Valve's latest shooter, Deadlock, surged in popularity on Steam after its official announcement and has already gained tens of thousands of concurrent players.
Prior to its official announcement, the game had an average of 20,000 concurrent players but that number has since skyrocketed to more than 90,000. Furthermore, Valve's official announcement of the game is still somewhat tepid.
Valve's Latest Shooter
The studio described Deadlock as being in an early development build and has a lot of temporary art and experimental gameplay. Furthermore, the game is so far only limited to friend invites via Valve's playtesters.
Deadlock is very early in the development phase, much earlier than a lot of games would be even in their closed alpha version. However, the game is resonating with fans despite Valve's lack of effort in its promotion, according to Forbes.
While the game has no official release date so far, it is a shooter that is made by Valve itself, which is known for not releasing a lot of games recently. This has made it a very big deal in the video game industry due to its potential.
Many players are also watching streams of Deadlock and are already making character tier lists even though a lot of things in the game will change before it even launches.
The game is currently in an odd situation as there is no roadmap for it to let players know what could happen to it moving forward.
The bare-bones Steam page for Deadlock went live on Saturday, Aug. 24, 2024, and had very little information and only a 22-second trailer. The footage basically pans over a piece of concept art for the game, said ArsTechnica.
The Game's Official Announcement
So far, everything about Deadlock, including its system requirements and release date, is still "TBD." Also, players who were lucky enough to actually be able to dive into it are promised "temporary art and experimental gameplay" on the Steam page.
The situation comes as the first leak about the game came a few months ago, and the playtest has slowly expanded from hundreds of players to tens of thousands. These include some who even posted extensive impressions of Valve's latest shooter.
In May 2024, there were rumors that "hundreds" of people were already playtesting the alpha version of Deadlock.
In August 2024, the project had roughly 18,000 concurrent players and fans were actively sharing information about it, including gameplay and character information, according to 80LV.
