Instead of updating or creating a sequel to Team Fortress 2, Valve is choosing to develop their own Overwatch clone, which will likely meet a similar fate to Artifact.
Valve, a company that effectively holds a monopoly over PC gaming with its Steam DRM platform and storefront, has long collected 30% royalties from game sales, generating billions of dollars annually with minimal effort. Now, they are reportedly working on another video game.
A handful of screenshots purportedly from Valve’s next major project, allegedly a competitive shooter called Deadlock, surfaced on 4Chan and Twitter yesterday. According to multiple dedicated Valve sleuths on Twitter, Deadlock is a 6v6 third-person team shooter inspired by Overwatch.
It goes without saying that avid fans of Valve’s own games, such as Team Fortress 2 which predates Overwatch by nearly a decade and shares many similarities and Counter-Strike, feel abandoned by Valve.
Major updates for the newly rebranded Counter-Strike 2 have been progressively slower, with the revamped game still missing vital features from CSGO. Meanwhile, Team Fortress 2 has been largely considered an afterthought by Valve for years.
That’s because, behind closed doors, Valve has been developing yet another team-based shooter, seemingly aiming to put the final nail in the coffin for the Team Fortress franchise. Instead of creating the long-awaited third installment of TF2, which, despite years of neglect, still maintains a healthy peak player base of over 65,000 concurrent players every day.
Despite all this, Valve is choosing to focus on a brand new project. This follows the disastrous failure of Artifact, which was believed to be their first large-scale game release in over five years.
Instead, it turned out to be a disappointing card game based on the Dota franchise, leaving those who attended its reveal at “The International,” Dota 2’s most prestigious LAN tournament, in 2017 deeply disappointed.
Deadlock aims to feature 6v6 battles across large-scale maps with four lanes, incorporating usable abilities and tower defense mechanics. This setup makes it sound quite similar to Dota 2.
The sci-fi setting of the game appears distinct from any previous Valve game. Images show a character named Grey Talon, armed with a bow and capable of using traps.
However, from the leaked early in-development screenshots, the game looks uninspiring and lacks creativity in its character designs, which seem heavily influenced by ESG inclusion values as does every single modern hero shooter.
Valve appears to be more fixated on chasing trends in an oversaturated genre. They could have easily dominated it had they chosen to continually support Team Fortress 2 and actively develop a sequel after its 2007 release. However, the game itself seems to be a lackluster hero shooter, merely an uninspired Overwatch clone.
Valve’s decision to divert their attention away from Team Fortress and towards another live service hero shooter feels like a missed opportunity. Instead of supporting their existing ventures that generate income from in-game microtransactions and gambling, they are pursuing a project that may not leave a lasting impression.
The leaked details haven’t received the most positive first impressions on social media, with many quick to note that 6v6 shooters with heroes and abilities feel outdated, while others have criticized its tech fantasy art style, which admittedly resembles Battleborn.
Valve has consistently disappointed with their recent attempts to produce new titles. Artifact was a failed attempt to compete with Hearthstone, and Dota Underlords didn’t fare much better.
Fans have been demanding that Valve return to developing games for years, but their monopoly over the entire PC gaming ecosystem which was established when they forced gamers to install Steam and create an account to play Half-Life 2 gives them little incentive to do so.
Despite this, Valve has diverted resources away from their key income sources to produce another cash cow with minimal creativity in an oversaturated market. This shift comes as the once-bright flame of Team Fortress, the franchise that essentially pioneered the term “hero shooter,” continues to dwindle.
It seems like they’re blindly throwing darts at a board to see what sticks, and everything they’ve made over the past decade has been less than stellar. Perhaps that’s why it’s called Deadlock, because, like Battleborn before it, this game looks to be dead on arrival.
