Early Deadlock Gameplay Revealed, Featuring Half-Life & Left 4 Dead Models

By now it's evident that despite not releasing any major games over the past decade (Artifact, Alyx, and CS2 don't count), Valve has managed to maintain one of the most formidable PR departments in the gaming industry, with their mysterious game, Deadlock, continuing to win over the hearts and minds of thousands of people, despite there being almost no concrete information about it.

First unofficially unveiled in May, the game quickly became the subject of rumors and speculation, with fans of the legendary studio coming up with countless theories regarding the game's plot and gameplay. The frenzy grew even more when it was discovered that hundreds of playtesters outside of Valve had already tried out Deadlock themselves and knew very well of its existence.

Despite Valve's insistence on staying secretive about the title and refusing even to acknowledge its existence, those lucky alpha-testers have been leaking small snippets of information throughout the summer of 2024, revealing glimpses of its characters and gameplay features. This eventually led to the developer reluctantly confirming that the game was real but in a roundabout way – not through an official announcement, but by quietly launching a SteamDB page and filing a patent for the game's name.

It all changed, however, in late August, when Valve finally announced Deadlock, giving it a page on Steam and lifting the confidentiality in its Discord community. While the page in question is currently barebones, featuring just three lines of description and a 22-second trailer, it was more than many fans had dared to hope for, proving beyond doubt that Deadlock was real and not just a product of collective delusion.

As for the gameplay itself, it seems to heavily resemble Dota 2's laning phase (the first 6-8 minutes of the game, for those uninitiated), with two packs of antlions meeting in the middle of the road and sorting each other out, similar to Dota's creeps. As with everything related to Deadlock, the footage raised more questions than it answered, leaving fans wondering what the final game would look like and what gameplay loop it might offer upon release.

Riding the wave of hype, a rumor has also emerged recently, claiming that Valve is also working on two new Half-Life games, one for VR and another, more intriguingly, for PC. While jokes about Half-Life 3 not releasing are usually perceived as the lowest form of wit nowadays, many couldn’t help but recall the sides-splitting gaming meme from the early 2010s when they heard this rumor, and given that it's been nearly two decades since the last Half-Life release for PC, the excitement is understandable.

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