The valve may be leaking. A handful of screenshots from Valve's next big game, a competitive shooter called Deadlock, allegedly appeared on 4chan and Twitter yesterday. A word from multiple dedicated Valve sleuths on Twitter is that Deadlock is a third-person shooter game inspired by Overwatch, Team Fortress 2, and Dota2 6v6.

The most confident explanation of the deadlock comes from Gabe Follower, a content creator focused on Valve.

"6 vs 6 is fighting on a huge map of 4 lanes. Available abilities and items. How tower defense works," he said of the project on Twitter yesterday. The fantasy setting was mixed with steampunk. Magicians, strange creatures and robots. Similar to Bioshock Infinite, high-speed movement using floating rails."

Gabe Follower also claims that Deadlock is the latest title in the Valve project that we already knew existed: Neon Prime. Since the name change evolved into fantasy and steampunk,

"Hero design has been pretty inspired by the Dota universe," he continued. See the main map Modern Steampunk European cities (a little like half-life). Initially, the game had sci-fi elements inspired by Half-Life and Portal, but after bad feedback, the development team decided to focus on fantasy."

The compressed screenshots that do the rounds are not sourced, but are somewhat convincing. UI Design Language, character design, minimap, and font selection are consistent with Dota. If it's a fabrication, it's a damn good one. Assuming the deadlock is real, the leak isn't getting the most glistening first impression. Some have pointed out that a 6v6 shooter with heroes and abilities feels a bit old hat in 2024, while others are certainly against the tech fantasy art style that has given Battleborn.

As expected, some fans are also disappointed that Valve is making yet another shooter that is not Team Fortress 3. To be fair, out-of-context screenshots released into the wild from unfinished games are a surefire way to get a negative response.

I don't know how long ago these screenshots were taken or how far the project is currently going. The whole UI looks like a placeholder, suggesting that the flat lighting of the drawn map is also far from complete. With just a glance at Counter-Strike2, you can see what a fully cooked Source2 game looks like these days, so it's wise to take these leaks with a grain of salt, although what I'm seeing doesn't excite pleasure, it's possible that we're talking about the next Valve game. The comparison between Battleborn vibes and Overwatch makes me automatically interested when there's something cooking in the house Half-Life, Counter-Strike and Dota2 built.

As Garry's Mod creator Garry Newman posted on Twitter, "I enjoy watching people who hate 4 badly compressed screenshots of a closed alpha game, but I'm 100% sure they're going to step on each other's throats and play it."

It is the last decade of Valve's service game focus has generated some high-profile stench, too. Artifacts, Hearthstone's Studio Big Swing, and its standalone auto chess spin-off, Dota Underlords, were a complete whim. We've reached out to Valve for comment and will update this story if we hear more.