Valve’s latest shooter Deadlock is currently receiving a mega-update that is attracting many players back to the shooter.
What kind of update is this? With the new update “Old Gods New Blood,” the developers at Valve have dedicated a massive update to Deadlock. Several aspects of the shooter are changing:
- A new game mode called Streetbrawl is available, where 4 players compete against each other in short rounds on a single lane.
- The map of Deadlock has been modified. There are new alleys and paths as well as more details.
- Instead of the usual base of the teams, there are now gods that have become the objective of the match and have adjusted their bases accordingly.
- Moreover, there are two new items and many updates for the user interface that reveal more information about the current match.
Perhaps the most important aspect of the update is the six new heroes that will be gradually introduced into the game.
New heroes drive the boom
What are the heroes about? With the update, the developers have also added six new heroes to the game, although not all of them are unlocked yet. Players will vote to determine which character will be released each Monday and Thursday.
So far, players have chosen the sleepy owl creature Rem and the bounty hunter Graves, who operates on behalf of the undead. The newest heroine is now the werewolf Silver, who can maneuver extremely quickly and agilely across the battlefield while also dealing significant damage.
Her release created quite a stir among players. The werewolf suddenly attracted over 117,000 players to the Deadlock servers on Monday evening according to SteamDB. This is the highest player count since the developmental release in summer 2024.
How important is the update for Deadlock? Although Valve’s latest shooter had a strong launch, the hype around Deadlock drastically faded in 2025. The player numbers of the shooter dropped to below 15,000 players at one point, according to SteamDB.
The large update is therefore extremely important for the new shooter, even though the official release has yet to occur.
Comparing this update to an update for Counter-Strike 2, where often only individual details on the maps are changed, it is clear that Valve has brought more content with “Old Gods New Blood” than other games receive in a year.
According to the developers at Valve, Deadlock is still in the early stages of development, and it is currently unclear when a release will actually occur. However, the new update is already laying the foundation for the future. A detailed analysis of the update has been provided by MeinMMO author Nico Scheibel: Valve seemingly wanted to quietly release an update for their MOBA shooter on Steam, but their hunger for pizza gave them away
