Valve’s shiny new toy Deadlock is thriving, but at a potential cost to the developer’s darling

Valve opened the gates to new players in August to finally test Deadlock, the new third-person MOBA-shooter the developer had been working toward for many years—and it appears the exciting game is making Dota 2 players abandon ship.

Deadlock was initially closed to the public, available only to a few thousand players. However, with Valve allowing existing players to invite their friends, the game quickly eclipsed 150,000 concurrent players in September. On the other hand, Dota 2’s player count has been on a downward spiral, dropping below 600,000; the game’s lowest player count in well over a year. While Dota 2’s player base has been declining since May, the drop has visibly accelerated with Deadlock’s growing popularity—especially among popular streamers like Shroud and AverageJonas.

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