Deadlock Hits 228K Concurrent Players After Massive Update

Ever wondered what happens when a closed beta shooter drops a massive update? Valve's Deadlock just answered that by smashing its own Steam concurrent player record, hitting over 228,000 players at once.

That surge comes courtesy of the City Never Sleeps update, which is packed with new content. You're getting six new characters to play as, including Rat King (described as "Scrappy, regal, tenacious"), explosives expert Deadman Danny, and the tea-drinking Baba. Each brings different strategies to the table.

The update also reworks the game's central New York City-inspired map, filling it with creepy crawlies and other terrors—just in time for Halloween. Beyond that, there are more objectives, improved voting, a greater selection of items, and a wealth of other options across various facets of the game.

In a note to the community, the Deadlock team explained their approach: "After the Old Gods New Blood update, we felt that there was still a good amount of work we wanted to do on the core game itself before we moved onto more polish phases of the game development (like updating older hero artwork)." They added that unlike previous updates, this year they've been working on several different things in parallel.

The devs also noted that Midboss, Guardians, and Walkers are due for changes that haven't happened yet. And while hero remodels are something they'll get to later, they emphasized that doesn't mean they aren't important—just that they're a known quantity that doesn't need to be done earlier than other things.

What Valve is doing is clearly working. Deadlock remains invite-only, but if you can get in, it seems worth a look. And in other Valve news, another Steam page is being turned into an algorithm as the company aims to show "10x more games to customers."

Will you be trying to get into the Deadlock beta? What do you think of the new characters? Let us know in the comments!