The future is looking bright for Deadlock. Despite its closed-beta status, Valve’s upcoming massive online battle arena (MOBA) hero shooter has already notched an impressive milestone, becoming one of Steam’s most-played titles with an all-time peak of 228,086 concurrent players (per SteamDB).
The feat followed shortly after the City Never Sleeps update went live, introducing an overhauled map, six new characters, fresh voice lines, new Haunts, and more. It also marks an all-time high for the title, which has no release date and appears to be far from completion. Current access is limited to players with an invite code, but the team shared that several features are being worked on in parallel:
“After the Old Gods New Blood update, we felt that there was still a good amount of work we wanted to do on the core game itself before we moved onto more polish phases of the game development. Unlike previous updates where our efforts were more singularly focused on the key parts of that update, this year we’ve been working on several different things in parallel.”
The team added, “Some others are things we’ve been working on in the last few months alongside this update,” the team said. “This even includes things like progression and hero/hideout customisations, as we feel those are features we want to be able to adjust and significantly change based on feedback before the game is fully released. There are also other things we’ve been working on recently that are more speculative (as in we aren’t 100% sure if they will be released or not based on how playtesting goes, though results so far have been promising), like large item redesigns/additions and alternate game modes that expand the scope of the game.”
As part of this latest update, players can vote in-game on which of the six new heroes — Nurse Harrow, Rat King, Solomon, Deadman Danny, Baba, and Violet — launches first in Deadlock, alongside HUD elements and quality-of-life improvements. The game’s New York-inspired map has been retooled and now features new creatures, such as Specimen, Past Dues, Gutter Ghouls, Barrel Mimics, Stage Hands, Crabbage Pots, Festival Spirit, Shrooms, and Underhands.
Si Jia is a casual geek at heart – or as casual as someone with Sephiroth’s theme on her Spotify playlist can get. A fan of movies, games, and Japanese culture, Si Jia’s greatest weakness is the Steam Summer Sale. Or any Steam sale, really.
Kevin Low
The Baroness
