Deadlock quickly eclipses 100K players—and you haven’t even seen its final form

Over this week, Valve’s new golden goose Deadlock shot past 100,000 players. If this is how the release is doing in its closed beta, just wait till it’s open to the public.

About nine different live-service multiplayer shooters are targeting a release before 2025 is over, and Deadlock‘s already ahead of the pack. As of Aug. 29, the game has hit an all-time peak of 106,447 concurrent players ahead of a giant new patch dropping. Of course, part of the buzz around the hero shooter has to do with the fact it’s an invite-only closed beta that’s been shrouded in mystery. However, according to plenty of gamers and esports figures who’ve spent time with the title, Deadlock is a straight-up good time.

As some gamers on social media put it, Deadlock, the “perfect combination of Dota and Counter-Strike,” is being teed-up by Valve to move forward into the current generation without a hitch. Although games like CS2 are there to appeal to fans who want a more tactically styled game, Deadlock leans on its Dota 2 influences much harder, while aesthetically riffing off of its predecessors, especially Team Fortress 2.

Players like Shroud and AverageJonas have gone on the record about why Deadlock just seems to have the secret sauce other games are lacking. In addition to having a very high skill ceiling and room for mechanical depth, the game builds on making each character fun to play. Shroud believes it will take 1,000 hours to scratch the surface of Deadlock’s complexity, and even then, leakers have found even more characters on the way.

It appears modern gamers are also just excited about the prospect of having a new Valve game to play. There’s plenty clamoring over whether Team Fortress 2 would ever get a sequel. Although that seems like a pipe-dream, Deadlock may be more than enough to fill that void. In addition to players wanting a polished game to try out, there’s the additional factor of goodwill that Valve has built within its community.

Valve has a stellar track record with big-time releases and is known for responsiveness to community feedback. That kind of trust goes a long way, going as far as having Gabe Newell hand-delivering Steam Decks when the first batch was ready. Much of the hype surrounding Deadlock is also based on the fan-engagement Valve has built in, and this may be why it’s already leaving publicly released titles in the dust so early.