Deadlock Breaks Its Own Record With 228,000 Players, Still Invite-Only

Imagine a game with no release date, no price, no official screenshots on its store page and no way to buy it, which still pulls more players than most of the year's paid launches. That is Deadlock, and in late September it did it again.

Valve's third-person hero shooter and MOBA hybrid reached a new all-time peak of 228,086 concurrent players on Steam, according to SteamDB, shortly after its City Never Sleeps update went live at the end of September 2026. The previous high was 171,490, set back in 2024. The new record beat it by more than 56,000 players, and the game still can only be joined through a friend's invite.

What City Never Sleeps added

This was the biggest single patch in Deadlock's history:

• Six new heroes: Nurse Harrow, Rat King, Solomon, Deadman Danny, Baba and Violet.
• Four new districts on the game's New York-inspired map, which has been reworked with new visuals and new neutral monsters.
• New objectives and locations, a wider item selection and better voting.
• HUD and quality-of-life improvements across the board.

Valve also hinted the work is far from finished. Changes to the Midboss, Guardians and Walkers are still to come, and hero remodels are planned for later "polish" phases. As one Valve note put it, there was still "a good amount of work" left on the core game.

The strangest beta on Steam

Deadlock is still officially "a multiplayer game in early development" with "lots of temporary art." You cannot buy or wishlist it. The only way in is the "Invite friends" button, which has turned the game into a sort of chain letter: one player gets in, invites a few friends, and they invite theirs.

That system has its limits, but it also keeps the community close to the developers. Valve can push big, risky changes, like a map rework or six heroes at once, without the backlash that would hit a finished, paid product.

By the numbers

• 228,086: new all-time peak concurrent players.
• 171,490: the 2024 record it replaced.
• 44,000+: the peak back in August 2024, when Valve first lifted its gag rule.
• 6: new heroes in one update.
• 0: official release dates, prices or launch announcements so far.

Why it matters

Valve rarely makes new games. Its last brand-new multiplayer game to become a lasting hit was Dota 2, released in 2013, and Counter-Strike 2 in 2023 was an upgrade of an existing series. That makes Deadlock the company's most important new project in more than a decade, and this update shows its audience is growing rather than drifting away.

The timing is interesting too. The record landed in a month when Steam itself was heading toward a new all-time high of 43.5 million concurrent users, and analysts named "live-service projects such as Wardogs and Deadlock" among the reasons. Read more in our history of Steam's concurrent-user records.

What's next

Valve has not said when Deadlock will open up, and it may not for a long time. For now, the smart move if you want to play is simple: ask a friend who's in. And if you're a fan of Valve's hardware too, the same company is still working through demand for its new Steam Machine.