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A whole bunch of new Deadlock heroes appear to have been inadvertently leaked by a streamer, giving us a first glimpse of 10 characters on their way to Valve's MOBA.
Highlighted on the r/GamingLeaksAndRumours subreddit, Deadlock streamer Deathy allegedly went live yesterday and accidentally displayed a greatly expanded MOBA roster than the one that's currently available to everyone else. Apparently, the streamer has since deleted the VOD after ending and restarting the stream, but viewers were still able to capture a screenshot from the moment it happened.
To be exact, 10 new heroes could be spotted on Deathy's screen: Boho, Bookworm, Doorman, Drifter, Frank, Priest, Punkgoat, Skyrunner, Swan, and Vampirebat. These all appear to be exclusive to the Hero Labs mode right now, which allows you to test heroes who are in early development. As it stands, for most players, there are only four Hero Lab characters at the moment – Fathom, Raven, Trapper, and Wrecker.
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Deathy's roster also showed a few visual changes to certain existing heroes. Specifically, Abrams, Pocket, McGinnis, Dynamo, Ivy, Wraith, and Lady Geist all have updated character portraits, showing certain changes to their designs. McGinnis, for example, now has a red headband, and Ivy has a brown hat instead of a blue one.
Bizarrely, the new Skyrunner character also has the exact same portrait as Lash, so it's not clear what's going on there, but it seems like that's probably either a mistake or a placeholder.
Right now, Deadlock is only available to play via an invite-only alpha, but players who get access have been able to share the love and invite their Steam friends to play, too, making the MOBA relatively easy to get access to. That's perfectly illustrated by its whopping concurrent player peak of 171,490 last September (thanks, SteamDB).
However, the implication of Deathy's recent stream is that there's some kind of separate playtest to the one that everyone else can access, which a smaller amount of players have got access to.
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It's not clear when Valve was planning on officially revealing these characters publicly, and whether plans will change now that they've been unveiled. Clearly though, there's a lot of stuff in development behind the scenes, which should hopefully be telling of some exciting times to come.
For more games like Deadlock, be sure to check out our picks for the best MOBA games you can play now.
I'm GamesRadar+'s Deputy News Editor, working alongside the rest of the news team to deliver cool gaming stories that we love. After spending more hours than I can count filling The University of Sheffield's student newspaper with Pokemon and indie game content, and picking up a degree in Journalism Studies, I started my career at GAMINGbible where I worked as a journalist for over a year and a half. I then became TechRadar Gaming's news writer, where I sourced stories and wrote about all sorts of intriguing topics. In my spare time, you're sure to find me on my Nintendo Switch or PS5 playing through story-driven RPGs like Xenoblade Chronicles and Persona 5 Royal, nuzlocking old Pokemon games, or going for a Victory Royale in Fortnite.
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