Deadlock is currently in invite-only playtest on Steam. The fastest way in is a friend invite — anyone already in the playtest can invite you directly from their Steam friends list. Once you accept, the game appears in your library for free.

Open Steam, go to your Friends list, right-click the person you want to invite and choose 'Invite to Deadlock playtest'. They will receive a Steam notification and the game will be added to their library. There is no separate code system — invites are tied to your Steam account.

Launch the game from Steam, complete the short tutorial that introduces movement, ziplines and the Soul economy, then queue 'Casual'. Pick a beginner-friendly hero like Abrams, Lash or Bebop, focus on last-hitting creeps for Souls and buy items from the in-lane shop between fights.

Ranked queue unlocks after you finish a set of placement matches in Casual. The competitive ladder uses the Initiate → Eternus tiers with sub-divisions. Solo and duo queue are supported; full stacks are matched against other premades to keep the ladder fair.

Right now Deadlock is PC-only via Steam. Valve has not announced a PS5 or Xbox release, and the playtest client only ships for Windows, macOS and Linux. A console version is possible long-term but is not on the official roadmap.

Valve has not committed to a public release date. The game is in active playtest with weekly patches, regular hero reworks and a public roadmap. A 1.0 launch is expected only after the hero roster, ranked system and new-player onboarding stabilise.

The current roster sits at 22+ playable heroes, with new ones added or reworked every few patches. Each hero has four abilities, a unique stat curve and synergises differently with the active and passive items in the shop.

Open the Heroes page, pick your hero and check the build tab — we surface the highest win-rate and most-played item paths from real ranked matches, updated every patch. The same data powers our Tier List so you can see which heroes the meta currently rewards.

Use the search bar at the top of the homepage to look up any Steam account. You will see match history, hero performance, K/D, Souls per minute and win rate. The Leaderboard page lists the global top 100 with direct links to each player profile.