Valve seems to be gearing up to release its first new game in four years, and we already know way too much about it: We’ve seen dozens of Deadlock’s characters and their full movesets on YouTube, we can poke around in its file directories, it has a pretty popular subreddit, and, as reported by VG247, it hit 17,000 concurrent players this weekend, rising to over 18,000 today. Not bad for a game that hasn’t even been announced yet.
You can observe the fluctuations of Deadlock’s crypto-player base over on SteamDB. According to the utility’s creator, Pavel Djundik, a Steam key submission months ago made the details of Deadlock’s playtest available for public view, and Valve took no action to change that. It certainly looks like the studio has been ramping up the size of Deadlock’s playtest though: Today’s peak of 18,254 players represents a 578% increase over last month’s high, and honestly, the devs of a lot of fully-released games would be overjoyed to put up numbers like that.
It’s hard not to be excited for a new game from Valve: I’m not even much of a multiplayer shooter guy anymore and I’m still ready to jump into this thing day one. Based on the leaks, Deadlock looks like a hero shooter with strong MOBA components—creeps, lanes, and an in-match store for purchasing upgrades. It’s also got an expansive cast of visually distinct characters rocking special abilities that will influence the course of battle alongside more traditional third-person gunplay.
And honestly, as comical as Valve’s refusal to acknowledge the game in the face of a deluge of public information is, the response is so uniquely Valve, and it certainly beats what we’d expect from most publishers. The stony silence only contributes to Deadlock’s mystique. I’d expect other companies to start flinging out DMCA requests over leaked material, but Valve is deliberately letting things slide, as if it’s all part of the plan. This hullabaloo around leaks is basically free advertising, and when the game’s official announcement does come, it won’t be tainted by the bad feelings a more heavy-handed response might engender.