Valve has now filed for a trademark for Deadlock, the hero shooter it refuses to admit exists

pcgamer.com:

Deadlock is a hero shooter that both does and does not exist, which is to say that we've all seen it and talked about it, and plenty of people have played it and are likely playing it at this moment, but Valve has steadfastly refused to acknowledge that anyone is even paying attention to it, much less that it's something currently in development, thus leaving it in a suspended state not unlike, say, a metaphorical cat in a box. But now Deadlock does not exist slightly less than it did not exist yesterday, because Valve has applied for a trademark on the name.

Word of the trademark comes from Twitter user Gabe Follower, the guy who got us all excited for Deadlock and then admonished us for being excited about it. A couple weeks after saying he had to stop talking about Deadlock "completely," he has apparently changed his mind, although to be fair he is talking here about a trademark filing and not a videogame, and so arguably it doesn't count.

In any event, the Deadlock trademark application is intended to cover «on-line computer games» and various related matters, including most notably «organization of competitions relating to videogames.» The application has been accepted by the USPTO but has not yet been approved.

So what does it mean? Not necessarily much: Valve filed a trademark application for Neon Prime in 2022, which was rumored to be a new game; that application is now «dead,» in the USPTO's words, meaning it was «refused, dismissed, or invalidated,» and is thus no longer active. But there are also rumors that Deadlock is in fact Neon Prime under a new name; Neon Prime, meanwhile, was reportedly the game originally known as Citadel way back in 2019. In other words, it's possible this project has been trundling along for years, and Valve has just been switching up names to keep us on our toes.

The only thing we can say for sure at this point is what associate editor Ted Litchfield said last week: This is getting ridiculous. Deadlock is out there for anyone