Image: Valve
Early footage from a prototype of Valve’s upcoming MOBA shooter Deadlock has been leaked.
Early footage from a prototype of Valve’s upcoming MOBA shooter Deadlock has been leaked online, featuring assets from early Valve games like Left 4 Dead, Half-Life and Dota. Content creator Gabe Follower posted gameplay footage from this prototype on Twitter/X, claiming that it was shared by a Valve developer named ‘Yoshi’.
Early gameplay footage from Deadlock shows reused Half-Life, Dota assets
Valve’s upcoming MOBA shooter Deadlock has been leaked in many forms over the last few years of its development. The game was first leaked in 2021 and 2022 under the codenames Citadel and Neon Prime respectively, and was reported to be a MOBA with sci-fi elements. Earlier this year however, the project was revealed to be a third-person shooter operating under a new name in closed testing: Deadlock.
According to new footage released by content creator Gabe Follower on Twitter/X, an early prototype of this game also contained reused assets from other Valve games. Presumably, this build came out of an early stage in Deadlock’s development, when Valve was testing the way its minions would work in large open maps. The prototype also featured first-person gameplay as opposed to Deadlock’s current third-person perspective.
Gabe Follower claimed that this early “gameplay prototype of Deadlock” contained “Placeholder assets from Left 4 Dead, Dota and Half-Life,” and was first shared by a Valve developer named Yoshi. At first glance, this prototype is surprisingly dissimilar to Deadlock, besides the AI-controlled minions fighting one another and seemingly dropping gold upon death.
The rest of the footage shows a large but sparse map populated with boxy assets resembling buildings and trees. In the video, the player roams the map for a little while before taking on a bunch of minions converging in the middle of the map. Although Gabe Follower claims the prototype contains assets from Left 4 Dead, Dota and Half-Life, there don’t seem to be any visible assets from Dota in this video.
The minions appear to be Antlions pulled from Half-Life, with a new coat of paint resembling Nyx Assassins from Dota - but that’s as close as they get. Regardless, Deadlock’s minions now take the form of little robots running around the map shooting enemies, rather than pesky little bugs. It’s clear that Deadlock went in a very different direction after this early prototype.
Deadlock is a four-lane multiplayer MOBA shooter that is now in closed testing. Valve finally revealed the game last weekend, after months of dealing with frequent gameplay leaks online. The game peaked with almost 90,000 concurrent players earlier this week, suggesting that it’s only rising in traction despite being in closed testing.