More people are playing Valve’s unannounced hero shooter than its supposed main competitor

Deadlock, the one game Valve refuses to publically acknowledge, is currently going through extensive playtesting, which was recently opened to waves of new players. So many of them have been flocking to the game that it now has more players than its supposed main competitor, Smite.

According to SteamDB, Deadlock is hosting some 9,171 players at the time of writing (Aug. 10), while Smite‘s player count is a tad lower at about 7,360 concurrent players. Being a third-person MOBA, Deadlock is seeking to tackle the market dominated by Smite for years, as no other such game arose to prominence over the past decade or so.

From all the leaks we saw in the past few months, Deadlock will have four lanes with six heroes per team, whose design is oddly more reminiscent of Overwatch than anything else. Still, due to its core gameplay, Deadlock is most similar to Smite, and Valve is very much aware of that.

Valve has been targeting former and current Smite pros, inviting them to play Deadlock early and give their two cents on the game. Dexerto reported in early June that Valve has pretty much invited every Smite pro and content creator under the sun. One of them, Incon, said for that outlet that Valve is “playing to win” and that “he feels Deadlock is set up for success.” Hi-Rez Studios, the team behind Smite and its upcoming engine update Smite 2, will have a hard time combatting Valve’s latest project, Incon said.

Deadlock has been compared to numerous games out there, and generally feels like a mashup of the core parts of several titles including Valve’s own Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2, but also Overwatch 2, Smite, and even Heroes of the Storm to a certain extent. In essence, it is nothing more than a MOBA but with a different camera angle, but its many elements definitely reveal its influences.

The game is still in the playtesting phase and hasn’t been officially announced or acknowledged by Valve itself. Given the state of the game revealed by leaked videos, the big day might not be that far.