If like us, you’re an avid visitor of SteamDB or SteamCharts, you might have noticed that Deadlock, a game that hasn’t been announced or even acknowledged by Valve, is currently reaching around over 18,000 players a day.
Deadlock, an upcoming MOBA-inspired shooter by Valve, has been only accessible by testers, and those lucky enough to get a code. So what gives? Why isn’t Deadlock announced and how do you get a code? We’re going to try to highlight the answers to some of those questions below.
Currently, there’s no formal way to get a Deadlock code. You can’t pester Valve, you can’t ask for one, you can’t sign up. It appears this is a case of who you know and who you are. We’ve heard tell of casters and pros being given a handful of keys through discord messages. We’ve seen them posted in emails and DMs. But there’s no official way (at the time of writing) to get a key.
At a guess, because Valve is planning to announce it at The International. Valve has a habit of making big spectacles. It stealth dropped Counter-Strike 2. It surprise launched Artifact (for all the good that did). Someone, or lots of people, at Valve, love surprises. So we guess that at the Dota 2 International in September, Valve is going to announce the game properly.
Thousands of people are playing Deadlock. Image Credit: SteamDB
Here’s the thing: We’ve seen this before from Valve. It was a very similar situation with Dota 2 when that game first came out. Codes for the beta were a hard to come by thing, and there wasn’t really a solid way to. They’d end up with pros and game reviewers, but there wasn’t a set way. Although, Valve actually announced Dota 2, rather than just pretending it didn’t exist.
Games journalism has changed a lot since the release of Dota 2, and there’s less and less places that can be trusted to do big reveal pieces. In fact the magazine that published the Dota 2 announcement doesn’t exist anymore as of a few weeks ago.
As a result, Valve probably doesn’t place much value on sharing details of the game with publications. Especially when every online source and social media platform will jump on and circulate the tiniest bit of information we get.
Overall, we’re still waiting for anything solid on Deadlock. It definitely exists. There’s a 99% chance its an official Valve release. And it should come out sometime. Other than that, there’s really little we know. I’ve spent my afternoon crawling through discords and sending some slightly brave emails to try and get a key, but until then
LOL
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