Despite being in its early stages of testing, Valve’s upcoming hero shooter MOBA title, Deadlock, continues to shatter records with every major update the game receives, and it’s not even surprising.
Earlier today, Deadlock received its first major update in roughly eight months, and calling it game-changing would be an understatement.
The Deadlock update in question, titled “City Never Sleeps,” not only added six brand-new characters to the game, but it also introduced a complete map rework, tons of new gameplay mechanics, a jungle overhaul, a revamped UI, and a plethora of other crucial changes that completely changed the way players interact with the game.
Deadlock Hits New Concurrent Player Peak
Needless to say, fans of the title weren’t gonna pass up the opportunity to check out the new update and experience it all firsthand, and on the day it dropped, several players across social media reported taking time off work for Deadlock’s big “patch day.”
As a result, Deadlock’s player count skyrocketed in the matter of minutes, as the game hit a concurrent player peak of a whopping 228K players in less than an hour of the patch going live.
This marked a new player peak for Deadlock since it was initially revealed to the world. Its previous record was 171,490 players back in September 2024, shortly after it was first unveiled.
While such player numbers are already impressive for any live-service title out there, it’s important to note that Deadlock is still an invite-only alpha game and is not publicly accessible unless you get invited by someone who’s already in on the playtest. This makes Deadlock’s player surge far more impressive, as the majority of gamers likely don’t have access to Valve’s upcoming title in the first place.
With the six new heroes being introduced to the game one by one over the course of the next few weeks, Deadlock’s player count is only expected to increase further. If you’d like to try out this incredible game but don’t have access yet, your best bet would be to ask someone who already has it or to look for invites in the game’s community Discord servers.
