Deadlock’s latest update all but confirms it’s real, the issue is that not a single soul cares

Marvel Rivals, Overwatch, Concord. The hero shooter genre is already pretty saturated, and with a very recent and sneaky update from Valve regarding what might or might not be Deadlock, another game that nobody really wants is even closer to launch.

So far, we don’t know a lot about Deadlock. It’s – apparently – something of a hybrid between a MOBA and a Hero Shooter, and it’s going to implement as many strategy and tower-defence mechanics as possible to get it going. Unfortunately, the market has repeatedly shown us that hero shooters are not a genre that anybody really wants. While Overwatch might have been industry-defining, it didn’t take too long for it to fall off.

You can now find Deadlock on SteamDB,, and it shows a confirmed name rather than the previously monikered Project 8. There’s 2,500 people playing it at the moment, either alpha testers or Valve is having a very big staff party held in the Citadel.

Leaked screenshots that were allegedly from Deadlock surfaced a few months ago, which caused a little bit of displeasure among fans of Team Fortress 2. One of the biggest criticisms that Deadlock faces is the issue of necessity. TF2 is one of the most beloved games of all time, though there’s no denying that it’s well past its sell-by date. Had the resources for yet-another-hero-shooter been instead directed at Team Fortress 3, then I think we’d be feeling a lot more confident about Valve’s next game.

It’s a tough time for hero shooters right now. While Concord’s beta was dead on arrival, Marvel Rivals has been a different story so far. It’s currently enjoying nearly 30,000 players in the playtest – a huge difference between the low player count of PlayStation’s counterpart. I’m sure that when Deadlock does really launch, it’s going to be popular. It’s going to hit huge numbers for the first few days just like Marvel’s, but I can’t imagine people are going to stick around for that long.

I am by no means saying that Deadlock is destined to be a terrible game. It could be fantastic, genre-defining, and more. What I am saying is that the hero shooter itself hasn’t made a good name for itself recently. While the games themselves might be technically awesome, the live-service structure often impedes this. If there is a company who can find a way balance this, it’s probably Valve.

Until it’s released, and the dust has settled on the launch, I don’t think anybody’s going to be wildly interested in Valve’s Deadlock.

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