Introduction: Valve Corporation is presently building an online multiplayer hero shooter game called Deadlock. The famous company is hopeful that it will be able to fuse several hugely popular multiplayer genres into a cohesive video game, but early reactions, as well as its promotion and controversies around it, show that this is going to be an uphill battle for Valve and its developers.
Article: Whenever a big developer creates a new game, it is hard to keep it away from the eyes of the public. That is even more true when it comes to companies that built a huge following over the decades. Valve Corporation is one such company and for over five years, it has been creating a video game like nothing the world has seen before. The name of this title is Deadlock and it should be a multiplayer third-person shooter that resides on the mixture of the hero action genre, complemented by the tactical gameplay mechanics of the MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) games. On the surface, all of the relevant factors for success are there. Valve, which is a massive gaming company covering both video game development and distribution, has years of experience in all of the relevant fields of gaming.
It has clearly decided to invest in a very prolonged development cycle, which has so far spent more time than most AAA titles. However, Valve has also adopted a very strange approach to the way it communicates to the public about Deadlock. The same approach culminated in early August 2024, when a gaming journalist from The Verge attained a ban from playing Deadlock thanks to his coverage of the same game. This odd public relations approach, as well as some dubious elements about Deadlock itself, cast a big shadow on the game as well as its potential to create a new chapter in the global scene around competitive multiplayer games.
The Verge Article Controversy
For the majority of the gaming audience, Deadlock was not a famous video game development project, despite Valve’s background. This lack of information is mainly due to Valve’s approach of keeping the entire development in incognito mode. So far, the company never officially revealed the game, there are no defined development milestones or even a general launch date. The game does not even have a website or social media accounts, all despite the fact that its development has reached a playable closed beta phase. Earlier in the year, the game began accepting beta test players. Then, in August 2024, a gaming journalist from The Verge attained an invite for the game and got a chance to play it. The resulting article, which showcases the game in a very general manner, received a big backlash from Valve. The author received a ban from the game and the resulting article confused many in the gaming community. Throughout all of the controversy, the main issue for a lot of people was simple: what actually is Deadlock?
Deadlock the Game
In its core functionality, Deadlock is a 6-vs-6 shooter, similar to games like Team Fortress 2 and Overwatch. The players control a hero-like character, set in a world of dieselpunk aesthetics and numerous urban fantasy elements. As a third-person game, Deadlock allows the players to choose one of over 20 characters, with their unique abilities, weapons, and general roles. Here, the game is similar to team shooters, as it provides characters in roles like sniper/long-range combat, tank/close-range combat, and healer/support, just to name a few more well-known archetypes. But, the game’s broader mechanics are more similar to a MOBA title. Each hero has their grunts, which are NPC soldiers, as well as fixed pathways on maps, each with their defensive structures. The goal of each team is to grin through the enemy’s defenses and reveal their Patron, a massive character armed with death rays and other capabilities. Once the Patron is down, a team can achieve its victory condition.
MOBA meets Third-Person Shooter
One of the biggest risks that Valve is making in terms of Deadlock game design is the introduction of the MOBA gameplay mechanics. These include preset in-map avenues of movement and attack, including zip lines across the maps that allow for easier player traversal. But, the control of NPC grunts is very similar to the demanding and never truly successful genre of first-person shooter strategy games. Here as well, players will need to combine the very strategic decision-making with a pure shooter non-stop action. When special abilities and upgrades for heroes are added to that, the entire experience might end up being too much of a mish-mash to be fun for anyone apart from those who are fully committed to Deadlock. For the wider multiplayer shooter gaming community, that combo might be a very tough sell. After all, the majority of shooter titles that are currently popular include pretty simple tactics and strategies. Instead, they rely on the sheer fun and challenge of the very basic shooting and survival gameplay mechanics. Deadlock clearly targets a different type of experience, which is going to be the bedrock of the game’s success or failure.
Deadlock Future
According to the available information, it is hard not to conclude that Deadlock is a nearly finished game. While things like cosmetic elements and final monetization systems are not in place, the game presently has a concurrent player count of over 20,000. That places it among the most popular multiplayer games on Steam right now. However, the ultimate intentions of Valve with the game remain unclear. The focus on the setting of the game was clearly deliberate, but right now, there is no lore or additional information about the Dieselpunk universe where it takes place. Furthermore, Valve remains tight-lipped about not just the future of the game, but also its present state of development. All of this is not unheard of. For example, Apex Legends appeared almost out of thin air when Respawn Entertainment launched it in early 2019. It is possible that Valve is also slowly building hype around Deadlock in a similarly atypical manner. But, the ultimate test for the game is not going to be its pre-launch marketing strategy. Instead, it is going to be the stability and long-term appeal of its shooter-MOBA mixture and the more demanding approach it offers to the players. To test that fully, Valve will have to launch the game not just to the closed beta gamers, but to the entire gaming community.
Author: Ivica Milaric, game designer and assistant professor of game design at the Novi Sada Academy of Arts, Republic of Serbia