How to Get Started on Valve’s ‘Deadlock’

When word got out that thousands of gamers were already playing Valve’s “secret” shooter Deadlock on Steam back in August, the first reaction from many was: How do I get my hands on this?

Since then, many more players have joined the invite-only playtest, allowing them to get their first look at the project. Valve made the game public on Steam a few weeks ago but hasn’t given the game a release date. “Deadlock is a multiplayer game in early development,” Valve wrote on the game’s Steam page.

If you’re not already playing and are curious, here’s what you should know.

What Is Deadlock and Why Are People So Excited About It?

Valve, the famed developer of franchises such as Half-Life, Portal, and Counter-Strike, has slowed its development of new titles a lot, so any new IP is cause for excitement. Deadlock is a six-versus-six team game that combines the hero shooter personality of, say, Overwatch, Apex Legends, and Valve’s own Team Fortress 2 with some of the multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) mechanics popularized by League of Legends and Valve’s Dota 2.

A MOBA typically has elements like home bases, towers that each side must defend, minions that help the main characters in fights, and a progressive leveling up of skills through the course of a match. If you’ve never played a MOBA, Deadlock can feel overwhelming at first due to the resource management it requires on top of the action-shooter elements.

OK, I’m Sold. How Do I Play?

You’ll need a Steam account and an invite to the playtest. Some players have been randomly invited by Valve to play the game, possibly based on their history with other Valve titles, but the easiest way to get in is to ask someone in the playtest to invite you, which is an in-game menu option.

In order to see which of your Steam friends is playing Deadlock, visit the game’s page and look on the right panel under Friends Who Play.

An invite may take a day or more to get to you once it’s sent. When you have it, you can download and install the game.

This might be a good place to warn you: Deadlock is a work in progress, and as such it’s liable to change a lot between now and its official release. As of this writing, there’s only one map, called “street_test,” and the roster of 21 heroes and their skills could evolve with future updates.

My play group has found the game remarkably stable and polished considering it’s so early in its development, but that doesn’t mean you won’t encounter bugs, glitches, or crashes in the game. The playtest is free; don’t expect the kind of customer support or full-featured experience you’d get with a retail game.

Learning the Ropes (and Rails)

First thing’s first: Whether you have MOBA experience or not, Deadlock’s set of tutorials under Learn to Play are a must. They’ll show you how objects and controls work in Get Started, how to get acquainted with the game’s 21 characters and their skillset “builds” in Hero Training, and how the paths leading to victory work in Lane Training, a guided quest through the city map.

Once you’ve completed those three guides, you’ll have the basics of how the controls work, how to purchase and level up your character’s items and abilities during a match, and how souls, the currency of the game, work.