Deadlock wiki
Playtest access is limited to friend invites via playtesters. Deadlock is coming soon on Steam and is not yet available.
InviteDeadlock is Valve's 6v6 third-person hero shooter for Windows. Matches run on the Cursed Apple, a rebuilt New York of lanes, interiors, and Haunts. You shoot with falloff, mix light and heavy melee, ride ziplines, last-hit Troopers for extra soul orbs, then spend those souls on items before you push Guardians, Walkers, and the enemy Patron. This Deadlock wiki keeps the live invite playtest, the 38-hero roster, Ranked rules, and the City Never Sleeps map work in one place so you can jump from access to a first match without hunting Steam news posts.
Invite playtest and Steam status
You do not buy Deadlock on Steam yet. The store page still lists the game as coming soon, Windows only, with no public price and system requirements marked TBD. Access stays limited to friend invites sent by people already in the playtest, using the in-game menu rather than a store checkout. Valve keeps repeating that the build uses temporary art and experimental systems, so a Haunt layout can move without a storefront patch note.
Playtesters send invites from inside the client. If nobody in your friend list is in the playtest, wait. The Steam hub and the City Never Sleeps page describe the same gate: invitation-only while the city, HUD, and incoming heroes keep changing. Use Invite for the click path and How to Play for the first-match loop.
What City Never Sleeps changed
Valve shipped City Never Sleeps on 29 September 2026. The patch restyles the Cursed Apple into themed lane stretches and four interior districts, turns old generic neutrals into Haunts, adds The Broker as a late-game alley merchant, and ships HUD plus accessibility work. Six named heroes sit in a community vote: Nurse Harrow, Deadman Danny, Baba, Solomon, Rat King, and Violet. Two land each week on Tuesday and Friday afternoons Pacific time, with the first of this wave scheduled for 2 October 2026.
Press covering the same week reported an all-time Steam concurrent peak above 228,000 after the update landed. That number is a snapshot of interest, not a promise about queue times. Community indexes still list 38 selectable heroes, including Old Gods vote arrivals already in the live client.
Where to start tonight
If you already have a client, scan Heroes first so you can tell the live 38 from the six names still on the ballot. If you are learning the map, The Cursed Apple page lists Theater, Chinatown, Haunted Lot, and Plaza, plus the Uptown, campus, and stock-exchange lane themes. Ranked players should read Standard versus Ranked before queueing: 60 Standard wins, 15 per selected hero, and a ladder from Obscurus through Eternus.
Economy questions belong on Souls & Shop, including Tough Crates that need Heavy Melee and The Broker's corrupted items after the first half hour. Win conditions live on Patrons: Hidden King and Archmother sit behind Guardians and Walkers. Street Brawl is the 4v4 with equal starts when a full siege is too long.
HUD clip from the current update
Valve published looping HUD clips on the City Never Sleeps site, including a health-bar treatment that calls out critical states without inventing a fake in-page HUD. The clip below is that official MP4. Open it to see how the new bars read in motion, then come back to How to Play for guns, melee, ziplines, and Trooper last hits.
The same update adds enemy color, subtitles, auto-move, auto-fire, auto-mantle, and camera shake. Those settings do not replace map knowledge. Chinatown's Bell Tower still rings on a concentrated soul stash, and the Sunken Plaza still trades stamina for high-risk reward.
Standard, Ranked, and Street Brawl
Standard is the unrestricted playlist. Use it to bank 60 wins and 15 wins per hero before you touch Ranked. Ranked is solo or duo, eight calibration games capped at Oracle VI, and a ladder from Obscurus through Eternus. Street Brawl is the 4v4 best-of-five with equal starts and a random three-item shop, kept from Old Gods into City Never Sleeps for nights when a full Patron siege is too long.
If you just got an invite, play Standard on one hero until last-hits and ziplines are boring, then look at Ranked rules. If your group of four wants a short fight, Street Brawl is the queue. None of those playlists sell a Steam key. Access is still a friend invite.