Deadlock smashes Steam record following new update that brings in over 228,000 concurrent players, but Valve isn't done: "There was still a good amount of work we wanted to do on the core game"

Even though it's still in closed beta, Deadlock, the newest shooter from Valve, is still setting records. The shooter just surpassed 228,000 concurrent players, on the back of a massive update focusing on various gameplay elements.

Right off the top, this round of additions, collectively known as City Never Sleeps, brings in no less than six new characters to play as. Among them are Rat King, who's described as "Scrappy, regal, tenacious"; explosives expert Deadman Danny; and my personal favorite, the tea-drinking Baba.

The half-dozen each bring different strategies to the table, which you can use on the rejigged map. There's one central location in Deadlock, a version of New York City, and it's been retooled here to be full of creepy crawlies and other terrors. Just in time for Halloween - I approve.

Meanwhile, there are more objectives now, voting is better, a greater selection of items, and a wealth of other options across various facets of the mysterious, multiplayer release. There's a lot going on here, and the devs addressed the community on their mindset going into this patch.

"After the Old Gods New Blood update, we felt that there was still a good amount of work we wanted to do on the core game itself before we moved onto more polish phases of the game development (like updating older hero artwork)," the team says. "Unlike previous updates where our efforts were more singularly focused on the key parts of that update, this year we've been working on several different things in parallel."

Many of those "several different things are addressed in City Never Sleeps. It's noted that Midboss, Guardians and Walkers are due for changes that just haven't happened yet. "On the other hand, things like hero remodels were in our heads as something we'd get to later, towards the end of early development, after other core aspects of the game were more fleshed out," Valve writes. "That doesn't mean we don't think they are important by any means, just that they are more of a known quantity to us that don't necessarily need to be done earlier than other things."

What the studio is doing is definitely working. Deadlock remains invite-only at present, but if you can get in, it seems worth a look.

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