Deadlock updates will be "a little bit more spaced out" so Valve can "improve our development process," but you can expect bigger major patches when they arrive

Valve's invite-only third-person hero shooter and MOBA mashup Deadlock may still be in the early development stages, but from this point on, players can expect its major patches to be less frequent as the team adjusts its update schedule. 

That comes from Valve dev 'Yoshi' on the official Deadlock Discord server, who explains that the schedule adjustments will "help improve our development process." They elaborate: "While it was very helpful for us in the beginning, we've found that our fixed two-week cycle has made it more difficult for us to iterate on certain types of changes internally, as well as sometimes not giving enough time for the changes themselves to settle externally before the next update came around."

Because of this, Valve is altering things so that "major patches will no longer be on a fixed schedule," which means they'll be "a little bit more spaced out," but when they do arrive, you can expect them to be "larger than before," so that's exciting. Don't worry, hotfixes will still be "released as needed," so players won't be left waiting forever for crucial fixes – the changes just seem to apply to the (previously) fortnightly updates.

With no more schedule to follow, it's hard to know at this point how often we can expect these major Deadlock updates to roll out, but Valve clearly still has plenty planned, as Yoshi adds: "We look forward to fleshing out the game in the new year."

While Deadlock was floating around in the ether for some time, it wasn't until August last year that Valve officially lifted the curtain on its Steam storefront page. Unfortunately, it didn't take long for cheaters to pose an issue, but developer Yoshi confirmed in September that Valve was "working on anti-cheat," at least. At the time of writing, we still don't know when Deadlock is going to escape its invite-only existence, or when its actual, full launch will be upon us, but based on Yoshi's recent statement, it sounds like things are expected to move even smoother behind the scenes thanks to this schedule change.

Risk of Rain co-creator led the design of one of Deadlock's new heroes, to the surprise of no one: "Viper is such a Hopoo character."