Quick question for the smart ones: When was the last time Valve announced a new game? We’ll leave the answer for later, but here’s a little preview: If we omit Counter-Strike 2, it’s been a long time. In any case, that streak seems to be ending with Deadlock, the next title the video game company will supposedly release. The game is a secret, although one shared by more than 20,000 people.
Deadlock? That’s the name of Valve’s new game. How did we first know about it? Mainly because Valve registered its name, it appears in the SteamDB database, and more than 20,000 people have already played it. At this very moment, there are 6,552 users inside Deadlock. It’s a secret game, considering there are no official images. However, we know you must sign an NDA when you access it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a secret shared with many people.
What’s this game about? According to leaks and users who've been able to test it, such as The Verge’s senior editor Sean Hollister. Hollister claims not to have signed an NDA, but Valve seems to have taken issue with his article and blocked him from matchmaking. In any case, Deadlock supposedly combines the MOBA genre with hero shooters. It’s like mixing League of Legends with Overwatch. If you’ve played SMITE, you’ll find some similarities, except for the distances.
The game has the goals of a classic MOBA, which are to advance through a series of lanes, knock down towers, kill minions, improve skills, buy items to improve stats, get rid of the opposing team, and finally, knock down the nexus, which in this case is a sort of turret called the Patron. Take League of Legends, add a bit of Overwatch and Team Fortress 2, and you have something like Deadlock.
In any case, all this information comes from third parties and leaks. The game is in the initial stages of development and will change, so it’s best to take everything with a grain of salt. It has no release date, nor will Velve launch it soon.
Deadlock players on Steam. Image | SteamDB
If it’s a secret, where do the 20,000 gamers come from? This is an excellent question, and the answer is as simple as curious: an invitation system. When someone gets access to the game, they can send invitations to their friends, who get invitations simultaneously, and so on. In fact, there’s a small network of Discord servers and Reddit forums dedicated to finding invitations, so it’s reasonable to think that Valve will eventually make this stop.
A genre without an exponent. Deadlock is generating a lot of excitement, and for good reason: It’s been a long time since a hero shooter made a splash. Overwatch did it back in the day but eventually fell out of favor. Blizzard tried to bring it back with Overwatch 2, which fell by the wayside. PlayStation is trying to position itself with Concord, and Valve looks like it wants to get in there. And based on what we’ve seen, it has a serious shot.
Speaking of time. If we take Counter-Strike 2 out of the equation, the last game Valve released was Half-Life: Alyx in 2020. Four years have passed since then, and we still don’t know how long it will be until we see Deadlock with our own eyes. Let time take its course.
This article was written by Jose García and originally published in Spanish on Xataka.
Image | Unsplash edited by Xataka On
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