Valve’s unannounced shooter Deadlock has become the worst kept secret in gaming, as it breaks into Steam’s most-played titles.
While games often leak ahead of time, through age rating listings or stray assets, it’s rare that an unannounced title is actually playable for thousands of people.
This has happened with Valve’s upcoming shooter Deadlock, which was previously leaked in May through a private playtest. At the time, it was described as a 6v6 third person hero shooter, which played like a combination of Dota 2, Overwatch, and Team Fortress 2.
Valve has clearly opened up the private playtest significantly since then, as Deadlock is now among the top 50 most-played games on Steam.
According to figures on SteamDB, Deadlock has amassed an all-time peak of 23,327 players on August 13. The initial playtest in May had just over 1,000, with the last 30 days seeing an influx of around 20,000 players into the alpha.
As reported by The Verge, Valve is sending out invites to access the game’s private playtest, and those chosen can also suggest others to receive invites too.
While Valve’s approach might make it seem like the company doesn’t care if it is publicly talked about or not, a reporter at the same publication was subsequently banned from the playtest after writing about his experience in detail on the site.
As highlighted in the article, the playtest doesn’t require anyone to sign a non-disclosure agreement, and only shows a message requesting that players agree to ‘not share anything about the game with anyone’, but this message can be avoided entirely by hitting the escape key.
The lack of strict agreements around playing a new unannounced shooter from the creators of Counter-Strike is bizarre, but it suggests an official reveal is likely imminent.
As shared on Reddit, people have discovered subdomain names alluding to some kind of beta for Deadlock, although it’s unclear when exactly they were registered, so this might simply be preparations for plans further down the line.
Considering gameplay is all over the internet though, it makes sense for Valve to officially announce the shooter soon.
It’s possible it could be shown off during Gamescom Opening Night Live, which is set to take place August 20, but Valve might also save the announcement for Dota 2’s The International finals, which is scheduled to take place from September 13-15.
Valve’s last game was tactical first person shooter Counter-Strike 2, which was officially released in September last year after several beta tests.
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