Valve-focused content creator known as Gabe Follower published the in-game screenshots on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. The account said the images were shared by Deadlock playtesters, and show Dota 2-style heroes battling on "steampunk European city" maps. One of those maps has fast-travel lanes; players can ride quickly across the maps using "floating rails, similar to BioShock Infinite."
Gabe Follower said that Deadlock is Valve's next game, and that it was in development under previous names Neon Prime and Citadel. He describes it as a competitive, third-person, hero-based shooter, with two teams of six heroes — a mix of "magicians, weird creatures, and robots" — battling each other. Deadlock also reportedly features tower defense game mechanics.
Screenshots of Deadlock hint at MOBA-inspired elements like bases and guardians that heroes would attack, and collectible orbs that may offer power-ups to abilities. All of that is, of course, subject to change, as Deadlock has not been officially announced.
Deadlock was reportedly styled as a sci-fi game "inspired by Half-Life and Portal," but feedback to the game's aesthetic pushed Valve to "focus on fantasy." Valve has reportedly been working on Deadlock since 2018.
Details on Deadlock were corroborated by longtime Valve reporter Tyler McVicker, who previously published under the Valve News Network moniker. In a video published on Thursday about the in-development game, McVicker said that Deadlock is currently being played in a closed alpha form by an unknown number of people outside of Valve. McVicker described Deadlock as "very personality driven" and Valve's "next major competitive game."
Polygon has reached out to Valve to confirm details on Deadlock and will update when the company responds.
Valve boss and co-founder Gabe Newell said in 2021 that his company has multiple games in development. Last September, Valve shipped one of those games, Counter-Strike 2, a replacement for its extremely popular first-person shooter, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, originally released in 2012. Newell also intimated in 2021 that there was "a lot of momentum inside of the company" to develop more single-player games in the wake of shipping Half-Life: Alyx in 2020.
For now, though, it appears that Valve's interests lie in multiplayer and blending the gameplay of its most popular team-based games.
Correction: A previous version of this story named Tyler McVicker as the person responsible for publishing screenshots of Deadlock. Those details and images were published to social media by an account named Gabe Follower, not McVicker.
