Deadlock, Valve’s confirmed-but-not-announced hero shooter, hit a peak player count of 18,000 on Monday, quite a feat for a game that, formally speaking, does not yet exist.
However this many players are getting into the game, it’s not by any means available to us plebes. Steam.db has been keeping track of the player count on Deadlock ever since it was confirmed at the end of May; clicking through to the game’s app page on Steam, however, redirects you immediately to the storefront.
Deadlock’s player count murmured along at about 2,000 concurrent users in June and July, then shot up beginning in August, and really took off one week ago. Sunday’s peak of 16,947 users was then beaten by Monday’s 18,254 (as of the time of writing).
In May, Valve confirmed a leak of an “early development build” without naming the game, much less confirming any kind of development roadmap or launch window for it. The leak, posted to X, had revealed a map with a system of lanes inspired by Dota 2, plus 19 playable heroes.
The leaker said they posted the screens “since testers started sharing Deadlock screenshots all over the place.” Valve later demanded that the X leaker cease with posting any info about the game, but the original post remains up. Then, at the end of May, redditors noticed that Valve had applied for the Deadlock trademark in the United States.
What can we expect from Deadlock?
Valve in many ways pioneered the hero-shooter genre, later joined by Blizzard Entertainment’s Overwatch and Respawn Entertainment/Electronic Arts’ Apex Legends. But Team Fortress 2 launched in 2007, and in fact many fans feel that Valve is neglecting the longstanding multiplayer game, possibly due to its age and saturated player base.
So it makes sense Valve would re-enter a field that has changed considerably (for example, the ubiquitous battle pass model, which TF2 does not have) in the 17 years since Team Fortress 2’s launch.
The original leak said Deadlock would be a 6v6 third-person shooter, “battling on a huge map with 4 lanes.” Deadlock will also employ tower defense mechanics (again taking inspiration from Dota 2) in a setting that mixes high fantasy with steampunk motifs, such as “magicians, weird creatures, and robots.”
One report has suggested Deadlock will launch in 2025, but again, Valve doesn’t launch anything until it’s good and ready to, so take that with a grain of salt.
Featured image by Tim Eulitz via Wikipedia, used under Creative Commons 4.0 license
