The maker of DOTA 2, Team Fortress 2 and Counter Strike 2 seems poised to announce its next major competitive game, Deadlock, very soon: and fans of Overwatch, DOTA and Fortnite should be excited.
Valve, one of the most influential businesses in gaming today, has invited thousands of players to a closed stress-test of the game in an effort to get as much feedback on the title ahead of an announcement. Which means that, if you know where to look, the internet is awash with people’s opinions, thoughts, screenshots and videos showcasing a game that, officially, doesn’t exist.
So, we’re here to bring it all together and break everything down you need to know about what is shaping up to be the next major hero shooter: Deadlock.
What’s Deadlock?
The first thing we should say is that Deadlock hasn’t technically been announced yet, so all of the information in this article is subject to change. So, what do we know so far?
From what we’ve seen, Deadlock is Valve’s mix of the hero shooter and MOBA video game genres, bringing the best parts of each style together into what looks like a damn good time.
It’s a 6v6, third-person, over-the-shoulder team-based shooter where you take part in gunfights to protect your team’s side of the map, while trying to take control of your opponents’ side. As with other hero shooters, such as Overwatch and Apex Legends, players choose from a list of heroes at the beginning of a match, which each have their own strengths, weaknesses, powers, and load outs.
Unlike other hero shooters, however, Deadlock also brings in a number of qualities from the MOBA (or Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) genre, which typically sees a map broken up into several ‘lanes’ which need defending. Each team will have AI-controlled bots protecting each lane, as well as attempting to push into the opposite side of the map.
Your character gets experience for killing enemy players, as well as their bots, and levelling up throughout the course of a match empowers your hero and enables them to take advantage of newer, better abilities.
Essentially, the more you win, the more you win – but it’s going to be unlikely that you win without the support of your teammates.
All of these things are fairly standard concepts within the world of MOBAs and hero shooters, but bringing them all together in a third-person game that looks like a mixture of Overwatch, Fortnite and Bioshock Infinite, made by Valve, is where things get exciting.
See, for those who haven’t paid attention to the gaming industry for as long as I have, Valve is a really big deal. They own and operate Steam, the biggest gaming client on Windows, Mac and Linux, and have made some of the most influential games of all time: Half-Life, Portal, Team Fortress, DOTA 2 and Counter Strike, to name a few.
Another Hero Shooter?
All of this is to say that expectations are pretty high, but it’s also worth noting that hero-shooter fatigue has absolutely set in within the competitive gaming scene in recent years.
Following on from the excitement and massive success of Overwatch’s 2016 launch, many developers have worked on and launched their own hero shooter titles. Some of these games, such as Apex Legends and Valorant, did quite well for themselves, while others, such as LawBreakers and Gigantic, have been essentially forgotten about.
This fatigue seemed to hit a peak when PlayStation announced their ‘Temu Guardians of the Galaxy’ hero shooter Concord earlier this year to near universal disappointment. Since then, the game, which will release later this month, hasn’t done much to differentiate itself from the competition and is widely expected to be dead on arrival.
So, what does this mean for Deadlock? It’s hard to say without a wider announcement to gauge a mass market’s reaction, but it’s worth remembering that people are already playing this game, and many already like it.
According to SteamDB, a third-party website that measures what’s being played on Steam at any given point, Deadlock’s player count rose over the past week as more players were admitted to the closed alpha (essentially an opportunity to test a game ahead of a release or announcement).
The game has consistently had around 2,000 people testing it for the past few months, but that number jumped to a high of 18,000 in August. As of writing this story, the game is in the top 100 games being played on Steam: an impressive feat for a title that hasn’t been announced or acknowledged by Valve in any way.
Where Can I See What This Game Actually Looks Like?
There is no official trailer or anything to showcase Deadlock, but there is a lot of footage floating around on YouTube if you want to see what the pre-release game looks like right now.
In fact, YouTuber Tyler McVicker created a supercut of quite a lot of this leaked footage, which you can see below. Thanks Tyler!
When and Where Can I Play Deadlock?
If you have alpha access, you can play the game now. For the rest of us, we’ll have to wait for Valve to formally announce the game and announce an open beta. However, it’s just as likely that Valve will announce the game pretty soon, and then launch it shortly after, as they did with some of their most recent releases.
As for where you’ll be able to play it, much like most of their games it’s likely that Deadlock will be only available to play on Steam. Sorry console gamers!
When there is an official announcement (or even an acknowledgement), we’ll update this story with more information.
