What the Hell Is Deadlock - and Why Can’t I Stop Playing It?
Half shooter, half MOBA, all gas. Inside the genre bending playground Valve quietly dropped into public playtest.
You might’ve missed it between Apex patches and Valorant updates, but Valve’s been quietly cooking something weird since August 2024. It’s called Deadlock, and it’s been hiding in invite-only playtests for over a year - half shooter, half MOBA, half…what the hell is this?
I didn’t read a single line of the tutorial, didn’t Google any builds. Just picked the blue Hellboy-looking guy with a shotgun and a book-Abrams-and jumped straight in.
Ten seconds later, I knew this wasn’t the kind of shooter that wanted me to warm up. It wanted me to learn by getting my ass kicked over and over again.
At first it felt off…like if Overwatch and Smite had a chaotic bastard baby raised by Valve in a secret lab. Third-person camera, floaty movement, weirdly charming jank style….and then I saw glowing orbs popping off minions. My old MOBA instincts kicked in. I started farming.
One quick soul siphon AOE, a shoulder charge that stuns into walls, passive regen, and a 10 second ult where you fly into lower earth orbit and slam dunk enemies into the ground - it all started to make a lot of sense. Then I bought an item called Lifestrike without reading what it did. First fight? Just dropped in, shoulder charge, heavy melee, instant delete. Half their bar gone, mine looking green like I just jumped into the Nickelodeon slime vat. That was the moment it clicked: Deadlock isn’t a shooter pretending to be smart. It’s a smart MOBA pretending to be a shooter.
Valve’s been pretty quiet lately, at least by Valve standards. After CS2 and the eternal DOTA money printer, they finally got back into the lab. Deadlock popped up last year with basically no fanfare, just Valve doing Valve things and dropping a half-finished masterpiece and letting players figure it out.
Is it third-person CS:GO?
Is it a weird fantasy MOBA with guns?
Is it probably something in between?
Yeah I guess it’s technically all of that. Deadlock plays like Smite, Apex Legends, and GunZ: The Duel all at the same time. Six-on-six teams, three lanes, farm troopers for souls, buy items mid-match, blow up Guardians (towers) to unlock more zipline area, then rush the enemy core-the Patron. It shouldn’t work, but through all the noise…you can see there’s a dopamine loop that’s brewing. Classic Valve.
A few months in, I burned out. I was getting clapped by folks who treated every lane rotation like it was their real job on the line. Took a break. Then my crew pulled me back in when new heroes dropped, and I met Victor - a Frankenstein looking menace with a poison aura that hurts everyone, including himself…a burst heal that scales with the damage you’re taking…and an ult that lets him cheat death and stun everyone around him once every few minutes.
I stacked items that healed me when I hurt myself. By late game I’d turned into an unkillable freak - six red health bars surrounding me, popping all cooldowns, and I’m just standing there laughing inside a toxic green cloud while they melt.
I truly think that’s what makes Deadlock special: it really encourages and rewards creative chaos. You’re not just picking a hero here - you’re trying to build a full on extension of your own personality.
But man, matchmaking drives me insane.
When it’s good, Deadlock plays out like a final cut of a movie - two squads perfectly matched. When it’s bad, it’s like someone hosted a time traveling LAN party in fucking space and forgot to invent satellite connections ahead of time. One game’s perfect, the next is lag, teleporting around the map like I’m artifacting through existence while on a PowerPoint file. Valve’s slow burn style of development is fine, but the skill gaps and connection issues need a ton of tightening before launch. Otherwise all this brilliance risks getting drowned in the noise.
Still, I keep coming back for more.
Every time I pin someone into a wall, I remember that first Lifestrike proc - pure satisfaction. Deadlock isn’t trying to be the next Overwatch or Apex. It’s something new entirely: the mashup point where shooters, MOBAs, and…whatever this is, meet.
It’s messy as hell, it’s smart as shit, and if Valve manages to stick the landing, this could be the literal blueprint for an entirely new genre.
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