Valve’s Deadlock was made public in August 2024 to fantastic reception from critics and general audiences who were able to get access, but the game has lost the vast majority of its players. Interest has waned, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a failure. Far from it.
Even at a player count that’s significantly lower than its peak at 171k, Deadlock still pulls over 10k players a day on average. It’s not dead by any means, but interest has waned. There have been three major content updates in 2025, and they’ve all failed to bring players back.
And, while you could argue Valve has as long as they want to develop the game because Steam makes an unimaginable amount of profit, there is a clock on this because of how long Deadlock has been public.
Now is the perfect time for Valve to make Deadlock public and drop a big enough update to re-capture their audience, and Summer Game Fest is the biggest stage they could take.
Deadlock can only be in testing for so long
In most games, when massive content updates drop, players are drawn back in droves to experience new features and content. Deadlock has had no lack of this, introducing several new characters, an entire new map, and a whole lot of other content in the past 6 months.
However, there are two key issues: There’s too much content changing at once, and the people who still play regularly make the game impossible to get back into. Player counts haven’t peaked over 20k in months.
Deadlock purposely slowed down the pace of updates near the end of 2024 to try and avoid the problem of the game constantly shifting in an attempt to give players a bit more of a steady and consistent experience. However, the sheer size of the updates they’re implementing makes the game unapproachable for many.
Deadlock’s map has been completely reworked since it came out, and there’s so much you need to learn in order to understand it.
This problem is compounded by the fact that Deadlock is arguably the highest skill ceiling (and highest skill floor) MOBA you can play. It makes DOTA 2 look easy to get into.
From the sheer amount of objectives on the map to all the items you have to learn, wealth of lane mechanics, and all of the extra tools you have like dashes, parries, melee, each character’s diverse set of abilities and weapons; the list goes on and on.
If you aren’t already playing Deadlock and haven’t been playing it in the time since it went into testing, you’re not going to have a fun time if you’re trying to get into it now, and that problem won’t improve over time. If anything, it’ll just get worse.
The only way for Deadlock to truly take off is for Valve to put on a new content reveal that’s truly special, something that gets a massive flux of new players in, makes the game public, and gives people a reason to jump in for the first time.
If they’re able to capture a big enough new audience, they’ll be able to bring back old players who would, for all intents and purposes, be opening an entirely new game. It’s significantly more finished than before.
ValveMcGinnis is an example of a character who has a much more finished model than before that’s reflective of what Deadlock’s final product will look like.
Heroes actually have textures now. The art direction has been refined significantly in the time since Deadlock became public. Valve needs to figure out how to start making money off of this game and put it out in the wild already.
If they its on this game for much longer and continue to give its relative few dedicated players the leg up, there’s a chance Deadlock never gets the type of audience Valve is looking for. It doesn’t matter how great this game is if people are too intimidated to get into it.
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