We have an interesting, albeit amusing story about Deadlock, but really, it’s about the game’s developer, Valve.
Deadlock was leaked last May, and the circumstances of that leak are important to understand this latest story. YouTuber Tyler McVicker explained that he and other influencers were tapped by Valve to help in their alphas and betas for the game. Previously referred to as Neon Prime, Deadlock was described in rumors as a 6v6 third-person hero-based shooter. It also has a resource collection mechanic, so it’s also like a MOBA.
Mcvicker explained that Valve did not tie down the outsiders they bring in to preview their games and give feedback with an NDA. Most of the time, they put their trust in those people not to let that information out early. In fact, as Mcvicker points out, plenty of people have seen tons of Valve’s prototypes, including those that were eventually cancelled, and those that became the games that we know them for.
Jump to today, and Tom Warren has written up a preview for Deadlock for The Verge. We’re sure there’s a lot of interesting information in there, but there’s a problem with it. Tom wrote about an early development build, and this is nothing like the open betas we have seen for upcoming live service games like XDefiant.
For those games, the developers are so further along that they can share it to the public. That means that the graphics and sound have been set, there’s a working UI, and the build is stable enough that people can reliably play it, and particularly, they can play it from different parts of the world, and with different degrees of connectivity.
In other words, they would be down to their last five or so steps from launching the game, and they have enough set up so that they can have people, who don’t program games or work in the industry, to test the games for them.
Since Deadlock isn’t in that state yet, anything that Tom has seen and has shared might not be in the final product. In fact, he may be misrepresenting the game by writing this up at all. As Twitter user MischiefsYT pointed out, there is a literal pop-up screen for the Deadlock development build, with this message:
“Early Development Build
Deadlock is still early in development, with a lot of temporary art and experimental gameplay. Do not share anything about the game with anyone.”
We have chosen not to share Tom’s actual preview, for the reasons we just gave above. But we will share a small update Tom added to his article:
“Turns out Valve was not fine with me trying Deadlock with friends; I’ve been banned from matchmaking! Oh well. Please feel free to make fun of me in the comments!”
If you were wondering, we would consider that the description we gave for Deadlock itself to also not be reliable. Perhaps some elements of the rumors about it are true, but we can’t declare anything about a game in development until it’s actually done and has been released, or is at least ready to. It’s facetious to act like this was an honest mistake, but it’s certainly a warning. Even the industry’s supposed nice guys, like Valve, will not hesitate to act if you do anything that could harm them.
