Valve has delivered the second major overhaul of its invite-only MOBA Deadlock, redecorating the game’s cursed city into three distinct themed districts and introducing six brand-new heroes. The update, which landed this week as part of the studio’s ongoing pseudo-early-access development, reshapes the map’s visual identity, overhauls a host of interface and accessibility features, and debuts a roster that includes the community-favourite Rat King. New heroes will roll out on a weekly schedule, with the first pair making their debut on Friday.
The overhaul marks another significant step in Deadlock’s long road toward a full public release, giving the game a much stronger and more cohesive look than it possessed before. Valve has reworked the entire map around a Halloween-inspired aesthetic, replacing the previous environment with a brighter city center, a haunted university, and a shadowy stock exchange. Every building and creep that populates each lane has been redesigned to fit the new tone, and the map is now littered with whimsical horrors: pickle jars with hands sprouting from their lids, sentient stacks of books lining the right lane, and slimy trashbag monsters lurking in the left.
A City Reimagined in Three Acts
Beneath the three overarching themes sit four districts, each carrying its own distinct personality. The theater district, for instance, is infested with literal stage hands manipulating steampunk-style automatons, while the Chinatown district features a bell tower where rival teams can battle over a fountain of souls to gain a currency advantage in closely contested matches. Even the wooden crates that players traditionally smash for resources have been padlocked and bolted shut, reinforcing the update’s commitment to a fully reimagined playground. The result is an environment that developers expect will take players some time to fully absorb.
Six New Heroes, Voted Into the Fray
To accompany the redesigned city, Valve has prepared six new heroes who will be released through a player voting system, allowing the community to shape the order in which they arrive. Two heroes will drop each week, beginning Friday. The most anticipated is almost certainly the Rat King, a crowned rodent that began as a community meme and quickly became one of the game’s most beloved icons. The rest of the roster is equally striking: a nurse who brandishes a needle like a firearm, a floating chess master evoking Overwatch’s Zenyatta, a skeleton wielding a rocket launcher, a cozy old witch, and a young artist who fights with a paintbrush.
Alongside the heroes and the map, the update introduces a sweeping list of quality-of-life improvements. Player health bars are now bolder and more readable, while small indicators help players keep track of nearby teammates. The kill feed has been clarified so it is easier to see who eliminated whom, and the shop interface has been made far more intuitive, complete with filters for locating items quickly. Players can also ping locations and objects on the map in several new ways, and characters now boast double their previous number of voice lines, accessible through a dedicated menu.
Additional tools let players create bots to practice against, and a more detailed breakdown of combat details caters to those who want to dig into the game’s mechanics. New accessibility options include custom UI colors, subtitles, and settings that let players automatically move, mantle, and shoot. Valve noted that these represent only a fraction of the changes included, with some additions intentionally kept secret so that players can uncover them on their own.
Despite the sheer scale of the update, Valve has not lifted the requirement for an invite to play Deadlock. The MOBA remains behind its gated access, leaving fans to wonder how many such massive updates it will take before the game finally opens to the public and everyone can experience what Valve has been developing.
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