Valve officially unveils Deadlock, a game we’ve totally heard nothing about

It’s one of the least-secret unannounced games I can think of in the last decade, but now it has an official Steam page. It seems Valve is finally ready to acknowledge Deadlock exists.

Noted today by a few eagle-eyed social media users, Deadlock finally has a public Steam page announcing the existence of the title, the fact that Valve makes it and that it’s a game with a spooky vibe and not much else that’s set in stone as of yet. The page has a bright-orange notice posted at the top telling readers the game “is in early development with lots of temporary art and experimental gameplay.”

According to people privy to the private Deadlock playtest Discord, Valve developers are also lifting the restrictions on talking about the game, and playtesters can even stream their matches. This all comes after leaks, more leaks, and a much-publicized gameplay rundown from The Verge after it was discovered that the “informal NDA” screen telling playtesters not to share anything from the playtest didn’t even need to be agreed to to navigate around.

There are reportedly hundreds of thousands of people who already have access to the title, and despite this being its first day as an announced game, I feel fairly confident in saying we know more about the game in its current state than we do not know about it.

But hey! Even if that wasn’t Valve’s marketing strategy going into letting at least tens of thousands of people invite their friends to a private playtest, it’s difficult to argue it hasn’t been effective. The game looks spooky and cool, with the short animation on the Steam page leaning into noir and occult vibes, as well as a unique art style that doesn’t look like anything else on the hero shooter market—important, given some of the genre’s well-publicized flops in an increasingly crowded space.

The reported hero-shooter-plus-MOBA is not out and free in the open. The devs reiterated in the Discord that much of the gameplay and art is “experimental,” and therefore subject to change. So Deadlock could look much different when we finally start to see a release date on the horizon.

But with so much publicity and seeming goodwill already behind the project, it’s difficult to see the game not succeeding.