Valve released the biggest Deadlock update in months on 29 September. Called City Never Sleeps, it reworks the whole look of the map, swaps out the neutral monsters, adds six heroes whose release order is down to a player vote, and brings in a travelling merchant selling corrupted items. The studio also took the time to explain, at some length, where development stands. The gist is that the core of the game still needs plenty of work before Deadlock opens up to everyone.
At a glance
City Never Sleeps turns the map into an occult New York, with three lanes named Broadway, Greenwich and York and four districts to explore.
Six heroes are arriving two a week from 2 October, in an order decided by player votes.
Valve says the core game has to evolve further before any polish phase, and access remains invite-only.
Deadlock rebuilds its map as a haunted New York
The city players call the Cursed Apple has a new face. On the official update page, Valve frames the map as a visitor’s guide to a haunted New York. The three lanes now have names: Broadway for blue, Greenwich for green and York for yellow. Each one runs past recognisable spots, from Times Square and Central Park to the Stock Exchange and the seaport docks.
Between those main routes, four Deadlock districts host the skirmishes: the Theater, Chinatown, the Haunted Lot and the Plaza. Valve has put new objectives in each. At the top of the Chinatown bell tower sits a rich pocket of souls, the game’s currency, but the bell rings out across the whole map while you collect them. Beneath the Plaza, a sunken square offers big rewards to anyone willing to watch their stamina drain on the way down.
The neutral camps are gone, replaced by creatures called Haunts, each with its own behaviour. The studio mentions a severed hand crawling across the floor, gutter ghouls, barrels that pass for scenery and mushrooms born from spores mixed with demonic energy. For a little breathing room, steam vents make you invisible and heal you slightly while you stand on them, and healing snacks are hidden around the city.
Six new heroes, and players pick the order
As with the previous batch, Valve is letting the Deadlock community decide who turns up first. The six newcomers are Nurse Harrow, Deadman Danny, Baba, Solomon, Rat King and Violet. Two heroes release every week, on Tuesdays and Fridays at 2pm Pacific time, which is 10pm in the UK, and the first lands on 2 October.
Voting now happens in the pre-game lobby, and the winning team’s votes count double. Your first win of the day doubles your votes as well. Once the releases begin, playing earns priority tokens that help you get the hero you want when demand is high.
That lobby gets a lot of new dialogue to go with it. According to Valve, pre-match conversations between heroes jump from over 700 to 1,500, and more than 10,000 non-ping voice lines have been recorded. The ping system has been rebuilt from scratch too, with over 15,000 new or reworked ping lines.
The Broker deals in powerful, flawed items
The update also introduces a mysterious figure, the Broker, around for a limited time only. He swaps your high-tier Deadlock items for a stronger, corrupted version. The catch is that every corrupted item picks up random drawbacks, the same for every player in a given match. His first shipment turns up at around the 30-minute mark, with more items appearing roughly every 15 minutes after that.
Valve says the Broker will only stick around for a few days. According to the update page, he leaves as soon as the first new hero arrives, so most likely after 2 October.
The rest of the Deadlock changes cover the interface and quality of life: new health bars, a shop that shows the most-bought items for each hero, expanded practice tools, dedicated accessibility settings and subtitles. Players reported for abusing chat during a match get muted for the rest of it and handed a 30-day communication ban.
Why Valve is holding back a public release
The note that came with the update on Steam is the more unusual part. Valve writes that after the Old Gods, New Blood update, “there was still a good amount of work we wanted to do on the core game itself before we moved onto more polish phases”. The studio is working in parallel on progression and on hero and hideout customisation, two features it wants to adjust based on feedback before the full release.
Other ideas are less certain, by Valve’s own admission: a large overhaul of items and alternate game modes, tested internally with results it calls promising. The Midboss, the Guardians and the Walkers are among the next things on the list, while remodels of older heroes will come later.
For now, Deadlock is still invite-only, through a friend who already plays. That hasn’t held back the numbers: it was the eighth most-played game on Steam on the morning of 1 October, with a 24-hour peak of 185,234 concurrent players according to Valve’s official chart.
To see what’s landing over the next few weeks, the Hitbox release calendar lists every date with its official source.