As Deadlock soars to a six figure player count on Steam, take an early look at Valve's latest when it was a lot more sci-fi, and a lot less unique

Deadlock is doing ridiculously well despite not being officially out yet, and now a much earlier look at the game has been shared online.

Well done Valve, your gambit paid off - despite pretending for the longest time that Deadlock wasn't real, while allowing people to invite literally any of their friends to play it, the game is doing incredibly well. Word of mouth has clearly helped it travel far, as over the weekend the game hit a concurrent player count peak of 164,855 players on Steam, according to SteamDB, a wildly impressive figure that puts it in the top 100 most played games on Steam. One can only imagine how well it will do once it's actually out and everyone can play it without needing an invite.

Before the game was officially announced, everything that came out about it came from leaks, and it seems that even though everyone can talk about it without getting banned, there's still some leaks to come. Again over the weekend, Reddit user DeathwingTheBoss shared an early look at the game back when it was called Neon Prime. Considering it's had two name changes since then (prior to Deadlock, it was also reportedly known as Citadel), this is definitely an early look, but even so there's clearly a lot of the same foundations there.

Deadlock when it was known as "Neon Prime"
byu/DeathwingTheBoss inDeadlockTheGame

You'll probably recognise some of the playable characters based on their movesets, even if they've got slightly different looks, and there's still the MOBA-like format and BioShock Infinite-like skyhooks. Aesthetically, though, the game is a whole lot more sci-fi/ cyberpunk, set in a futuristic, Japan-inspired map that honestly feels much less unique than the current, supernatural 1900s-esque incarnation of the game.

The look Valve has ended up with is definitely a lot stronger, and should help it stand out from the ever-growing crowd of live-service shooters, but also it's Valve, so maybe it never needed that boost to begin with.