Valve’s Deadlock is already close to 100k players during limited access

The developers of Counter-Strike and Dota 2 recently surprised fans with another potential Esports title with the announcement of Deadlock. Surprisingly enough, the game is in a very playable state and has currently surpassed 98,000 concurrent players on steam despite being in an alpha.

For quite some time, the game was kept behind shades despite almost everyone knowing about it. However, things have changed as Valve officially announced Deadlock in very early development. The only way to currently gain limited access is through a friend invite.

This soft launch has been very well received by the players, especially those wanting to get into a MOBA title but did not like the top-down perspective. Deadlock is a third-person shooter that adds a lot of elements from other games while also improving upon it.

Also Read: Valve’s upcoming game Deadlock crossed over 18,000 concurrent players before even reaching beta

How did deadlock become so popular?

The secrete to Deadlock’s success is due to many factors. Despite being a simple concept, the game does many things right across most of the aspects. The only complaints a few players are citing is the length of a single match, which can go well over 30 minutes, but that is how a MOBA game usually goes.

Many games are released in the same genre each year, but they ultimately fail to capture the attention of many. This is mostly due to binging the same things to the table like every other game. Deadlock launched with fun gameplay in addition to massive quality of life features that many games usually forget.

Company reputation also plays a huge role in boosting player count. Valve and Riot Games have created four of the biggest esports titles across the globe, so new games from these companies are already popular. A big example is 2KXO, a fighting game from Riot set in the League of Legends universe, the game is also in closed alpha, but the initial reviews have been positive.

Although, they do need to innovate to keep up that reputation while also listening to the community to improve upon it, which Deadlock is doing very effectively. For a game in limited access alpha, Deadlock feels a lot better than most early access.