Following the release of its “The City Never Sleeps” update, Deadlock has slowly become one of Steam’s most popular titles, despite the fact that the game is still in an invite-only semi-closed beta. Now, with the launch of the Rat King, Deadlock is officially the third game on Steam by concurrent players, meaning Valve is utterly dominating its own charts.
Last night, Deadlock got itself to number three on Steam’s concurrent player charts (thanks SteamDB), hitting a 216,000 player peak despite not being readily available. It would later climb to 228,000, breaking its own all-time player record, but was soon overtaken by WARDOGS, which itself is seeing a massive influx of players. This meant that Valve held all three top spots on its own platform, which hasn’t happened in a very long time. Specifically, Deadlock’s brief position was shared by Dota 2 and CS2 in second and first place, respectively.
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This new surge of popularity comes after Deadlock‘s massive update and overhaul titled “The City Never Sleeps.” It brought sweeping changes to the map, introducing visually distinct areas themed after real-life parts of New York, revamped the jungle, made hundreds of tweaks to its core systems, and opened voting for six new heroes. The first of those, the Rat King, was added to the game last night, with new heroes dropping each Tuesday and Friday.
Deadlock continues to grow and develop within an active but gated, invite-only beta where the developers constantly look at gameplay metrics to tweak things on the go. It is a very interesting approach to game development and mirrors Valve’s work on Dota 2 back in 2011, which also had a similar beta environment.
When exactly the game will be officially announced or promoted or, God forbid, released remains unknown, but by my own humble prediction, I could see it start its marketing run sometime late next year at the earliest.
