A new Valve game appears to be on the horizon. Thousands of players have received invites to a game called Deadlocka team-based shooter with multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) elements. While Valve hasn’t formally announced it yet, screenshots, gameplay, and even playtimes are already appearing online.
At the time of writing, Valve has not said whether or not the game is theirs. Nor does it appear that any effort has been made to remove it. Deadlock from Steam, where more than 15,000 people were playing it on Tuesday, according to SteamDBThe all-time high, reached on Monday, was 18,254 players.
It is not clear how long Deadlock has been available to play, although A user on the game’s subreddit claims They’ve been playing for months. Screenshots and gameplay footage on platforms like unknown and YouTube They’ve been floating around out there for days.
Despite Valve’s silence (the company did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment), the mystery could prove to be a boon for the game. The developer behind critically acclaimed hits like Half-life, Portaland Fortress 2 TeamValve is notoriously secretive, often in ways that only help fuel anticipation for its titles. Gamers have been waiting for the sequel to Half-life 2 for nearly two decades, with little or no information from the company.
According The edgewho posted a hands-on preview of DeadlockIt’s a 6v6 shooter reminiscent of Blizzard’s. Supervision“Your team of heroes attempts to dominate a map by slowly wearing down the opposing team and pushing them back,” Sean Hollister wrote in his preview. “But you’re also leading an army of NPC soldiers down four different lanes to destroy the opposing team’s stationary defenses, a bit like Dota 2 or other MOBA games.”
Hollister has since been banned from the game, presumably for his article. A game launch pop-up he shared in his article warns that the game is still in “early development” and asks players to “not share anything about the game with anyone.” (Hollister says he was able to avoid agreeing to this by pressing the Escape key.)
On the internet, some gamers were angry at The Verge for reporting on the title, which currently requires an invite to play, but that seems to have only increased interest in it, whatever. he ends up being.
When and where? Deadlock Will it be available in a wider release? That remains a mystery.