Valve primed to take on Overwatch, Marvel Rivals with its own 6-vs-6 hero shooter, leaker claims

The next game by Counter-Strike and Half-Life developer Valve is a six-vs-six hero shooter named Deadlock, according to a purported leak.

Valve has yet to hop back into the hero shooter genre since Team Fortress 2, but that’s about to change, according to leaker @gabefollower on Twitter/X. The game is reportedly a competitive, third-person, hero-based shooter that has a “fantasy setting mixed with steampunk.”

The leaker claims the game was previously known as Neon Prime and Citadel, and says it will also feature “usable abilities and items,” “magicians, weird creatures and robots,” and “fast travel using floating rails, similar to BioShock Infinite.”

Deadlock is planned to feature “fast-paced, interesting ADHD gameplay,” according to gabefollower, and will be something like “a combination of Dota 2, Team Fortress 2, Overwatch, Valorant, Smite, Orcs Must Die.”

It didn’t take long for Twitter/X users to find that there’s a potential account for the game, @playdeadlock, that was just created last month, so it’s looking like this report could end up being true.

Gabefollower claims the hero design in Deadlock is “pretty much inspired by Dota” and that it initially had “sci-fi elements inspired by Half-Life and Portal, but after bad feedback dev team decided to focus on fantasy.”

The news of an all-new IP will likely come as a disappointment, but not a surprise, to anyone hoping for long-anticipated sequels such as Half-Life 3, Portal 3, or Left 4 Dead 3. But the prospects of a proven developer like Valve re-entering the same genre as games like TF2, Overwatch, Marvel Rivals, and more is quite exciting, albeit in a different way.

As with all leaks, this news is unconfirmed until made official by Valve. But for now, this is looking and sounding like it could very easily come to fruition.