Valve Fans Defend Deadlock Against Supposed Leaks

Valve fans showed surprising loyalty to the company after The Verge's recent article covering its hero-based shooter Deadlock. 

The outlet's Sean Hollister got to play the game in a closed test and shared his experience, screenshots, and a video. This would usually excite potential players, but not this time: The Verge was heavily criticized for publishing the piece.

So what's the problem? When you enter Deadlock, it shows a message asking you not to share anything about the game with anyone. Hollister said he hadn't clicked OK and instead just pressed Escape and continued playing, thus disagreeing with it. You probably see why people had an issue with this.

They blamed The Verge for disregarding the NDA, to which the outlet replied no one signed any contracts. While Valve didn't say anything directly, it did ban Hollister from matchmaking.

Not everyone is against The Verge's move, with some people saying it did what it was supposed to sharing information about this mysterious project which everybody knows about and which hit another concurrent player peak of 23,327 after the article was published.

Deadlock is shaping to be a "combination of Dota 2, Team Fortress 2, Overwatch, Valorant, Smite, and Orcs Must Die" with robots and ziplines. We've seen tons of leaks about it already, but I guess it's the fact that The Verge is a big name in the industry (which also admitted to kind of cheating the agreement) that bothered the masses so much.

What do you think about this decision? Should The Verge have shared its findings, or would it be better for Deadlock to stay an open secret leaked by others? Join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Reddit, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.