After the initial player count boom that came with Deadlock Alpha access, the player count has steadily fallen. And, sure, it’s not publicly available yet, but the player count going from close to 200k at “launch” to around 10k before the latest update isn’t exactly ideal.
Deadlock has maintained a small yet loyal following through its lengthy Alpha. If you consider 10-15k players small, anyways. There’s pretty much never been a point where queues aren’t popping, and there are some people really grinding to learn ahead of the eventual release.
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However, the average player moved on. Updates take months at this point, with the dev team generally shifting away from rapid changes to work on more substantial updates.
And, around 3 months after the last big update, the team really delivered. Between releasing 6 new heroes in the span of less than 2 weeks, new music, a UI overhaul, and, for those who haven’t played since last year, a completely new map. There’s a lot to love here, and players are Deadlocked in.
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Deadlock earns players back with massive update
So, why are so many people returning to Deadlock all at once if the previous updates didn’t win them over?
At the time of writing, only three of the six revealed characters have been released. But that’s a key part of why player retention has been so high: Players get to vote for the next character they want, but they have to play matches in order to earn votes.
However, this wouldn’t mean anything if the game wasn’t fun. Fortunately, the new roster of heroes has players more engaged than ever.
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The proposition of fun and exciting new characters combined with the ability to earn your way toward deciding who’s next seems to be a winning formula for player retention, but that’s not all. The UI, menus, music, and many of the character designs have had some massive quality of life improvements, especially if you’re someone who hasn’t played since last year.
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Between the new map, an easier to access item system, 3 lanes instead of 4, and a whole lot of quality of life changes, it’s no surprise that players are hopping in and sticking around.
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DeadlockThe Doorman is the newest Deadlock character at the time of writing, and he’s probably the closest thing we’re ever going to get to Portal 3.
Deadlock went from 14k peak players to around 28k in the day after the update, but it’s since catapulted all the way to 47k. This is the biggest peak Deadlock has had in months, and there are no signs of that momentum stopping.
While the game is nowhere close to a full release yet, Valve is putting their full force into making their vision for Deadlock a reality.