Valve’s Deadlock is officially official, but you still can’t play without an invite

Deadlock, the open secret of a game Valve is not-so-discreetly testing in an invite-only alpha now, is finally listed on Steam. Moreover, some of the poorly enforced secrecy rules for those playing it have been lifted.

Deadlock has been soft announced, still in invite-only development. https://t.co/KIL8omPFxP pic.twitter.com/sI3o82Q5nF

— SteamDB (@SteamDB) August 23, 2024

Not that the listing itself sheds a lot of light on what Valve has cooking in its first all-new work for PC in more than a decade. Deadlock’s launch date is still “to be announced.” The page also notes that “access is currently limited to friend invite via our playtesters.”

Deadlock’s product page doesn’t have any screenshots, but it does have a 22-second teaser trailer that is subtle to the point of not even hinting at anything. Apparently it’s the current build’s startup menu.

During its unannounced-but-everyone-knows-it-exists phase, Deadlock was drawing peak player counts around 18,000 based largely on members of a private alpha extending invitations to their friends.

An early development build that leaked out was confirmed by Valve back in May, although the publisher did not use the game’s name in that statement. Valve fired a trademark application for “Deadlock” as a video game title in June.

Deadlock is a hero-shooter, with some tower defense elements and other features from Valve’s immensely popular MOBA, Dota 2, feathered in.

The earliest leaks said Deadlock is a 6v6 hero shooter on a very large map with four lanes connecting each side’s base, much like Dota 2.

Player-controlled characters use their special abilities and upgraded weapons to assist their NPC armies in breaking the other side’s defenses for a showdown with the opposing side’s boss NPC.

Valve dev "Yoshi" shared early footage of gameplay prototype for Deadlock. Placeholder assets from Left 4 Dead, Dota and Half-Life… pic.twitter.com/fmKfl7d1KA

— ‎Gabe Follower (@gabefollower) August 26, 2024

Visually, Deadlock’s heroes are drawn from a setting that mixes high fantasy with steampunk, allowing for “magicians, weird creatures, and robots,” according to early leaks.

For now, anyone who does get into the closed alpha will find a lot of placeholding assets, including “lots of temporary art and experimental gameplay.” Some testers have reported seeing Left 4 Dead assets used as placeholders.

A Valve community manager said on the game’s Discord channel that Valve was “lifting the rules for public conversation about Deadlock to allow for things like streaming, community websites and discussions.”

So everything really is out in the open, even if it seems like any kind of a launch — including an early access release — is still a long ways off.

Featured image via Valve

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