Over the last week stills and clips of a game called Deadlock, which is claimed to be the next big game from Valve, have been leaking online. The 6v6 hero shooter is either legit or an extremely good fake, and the latter's looking increasingly unlikely with the volume of material that's been released: today, there's more. PC Gamer has contacted Valve for comment but, so far, there's no response.
In the absence of any official word, we can't say whether Deadlock really is Valve's next game, but what's undeniable is that there's a beta version out there and elements of it do look like a Valve game. The leaks began with screenshots and a description from X user Gabe Follower, who specialises in Valve data-mining: «6 vs 6 battling on huge maps with 4 lanes. Usable abilities and items. Tower defense mechanics. Fantasy setting mixed with steampunk. Magicians, weird creatures and robots. Fast travel using floating rails, similar to Bioshock Infinite.»
This was followed by the leak of a Deadlock video by PlayerIGN on X (not affiliated with IGN), which pretty much lines up with that description. The rails are a notable feature of the maps, carrying players quickly between zones and allowing them to drop-down on fights and other players, while I can't alone in detecting the faintest hints of Team Fortress 2's Americana in the city designs.
The above was the start, but the floodgates have finally opened thanks to the message board 4chan, which has a series of threads devoted to Deadlock leaks, and an astonishing 94 individual video clips have been posted (it may well be more by the time of publication). These are all taken from the beta or in-game files (eg, tutorials) so, whatever Deadlock is, it definitely appears to be real and this is a leak on a huge scale for Valve. It's not quite up there with the theft of Half-Life 2's source code, but not far off.
Certain clips from these leaks have begun to spread online, and we'll begin with around three minutes of footage split
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