https://steamdb.info/app/1422450/charts/

Valve keeping up with the trend of “worst kept secrets”. You need an invite to join the alpha but since everyone who owns it can refer their friends, it spread very quickly.

I’ve been playing it the past few days and it’s honestly very fun. Still a bit rough around the edges (especially in terms of balance) since it’s in early access, but it has serious potential to be dota 2 levels of popular.

For the unaware, Deadlock is a 3rd person shooter MOBA. It feels like a mix of Dota and Overwatch/Team Fortress. Nobody is allowed to share footage or screenshots, but obviously with so many playing there’s a ton of leaks out there.

  • woelkchen@lemmy.worldEnglish
    438·
    3 months ago

    Somebody needs to tell the games team that they make their own operating system. This is Windows-only. WTF.

    • Virkkunen@fedia.io
      352·
      3 months ago

      Runs perfectly fine on Linux though, with DX11 or Vulkan. On Windows, Vulkan has some performance issues that make it quite unenjoyable, but in Linux for me it plays a lot better with Vulkan than Windows DX11.

      • woelkchen@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2712·
        3 months ago

        Runs perfectly fine on Linux though

        The quality of Proton is not the point, the point is that they’re not dogfooding their own platform. They’ll likely follow the same course as CS2: Lengthy prerelease test exclusively on Windows, then a few days before actual release someone will port the game to Linux/SteamOS and release day is the first day of the Linux port’s alpha test.

        How can anybody at Valve expect game publishers to take Steam Deck and SteamOS seriously if the developer of the actual platform is not dogfooding it with their own games?

        • Virkkunen@fedia.io
          102·
          3 months ago

          Yeah I get what you mean, but with Linux gaming I think it’s great enough that it runs with Proton and no one is blocking it. I also believe they’ll port it to native Linux after the alpha stage is done, but remember that the game is in a closed alpha state, so at no point this should be taken as “Valve not dogfooding their platform”. All we can do right now is wait and see.

          • woelkchen@lemmy.worldEnglish
            59·
            3 months ago

            with Linux gaming I think it’s great enough that it runs with Proton and no one is blocking it.

            You clearly missed many news from the gaming sphere.

            remember that the game is in a closed alpha state, so at no point this should be taken as “Valve not dogfooding their platform

            Yes, it is. Sony is developing their games for PlayStation first and Windows as an afterthought. I’m not saying that Windows should be an afterthought but SteamOS should be a development target from day 1.

            All we can do right now is wait and see.

            Grab your Steam Deck, install Counter-Strike 2, and look at the state of Source2 games right now.

        • Vilian@lemmy.caEnglish
          52·
          3 months ago

          They are beta testing, remove the OS issue and they van focus on games issues

          • woelkchen@lemmy.worldEnglish
            47·
            3 months ago

            They are beta testing, remove the OS issue and they van focus on games issues

            SteamOS needs to be day 1 development target for all things at Valve. With your attitude we end up with CS2 broken on Steam Deck until now.

            • KeenFlame@feddit.nuEnglish
              42·
              3 months ago

              No. Development occurs on windows machines, so this is where they deploy. It’s essential for a studio to work on core mechanics, gameplay loop and feel. It’s obviously going to be steam deck day one.

              • woelkchen@lemmy.worldEnglish
                23·
                3 months ago

                No. Development occurs on windows machines

                “Development occurs on” and “development target” are different things.

                It’s obviously going to be steam deck day one.

                Sure, like CS2 is on Steam Deck since day one and still broken.

                • KeenFlame@feddit.nuEnglish
                  21·
                  3 months ago

                  Who the actual fuck do you think wants to play cs on a motherfucking steam deck? And again, you of course target your own machine first for a pc game. It’s how 99% of all editors work. Why would you try to argue something that you don’t know how it works?

            • Vilian@lemmy.caEnglish
              53·
              3 months ago

              A yes, because Steam Deck is the most optimal platform to play competitive FPS

              • woelkchen@lemmy.worldEnglish
                43·
                3 months ago

                A yes, because Steam Deck is the most optimal platform to play competitive FPS

                That’s not even the argument. The argument is that Valve’s own game teams should be able to support their own hardware.

        • ngwoo@lemmy.worldEnglish
          52·
          3 months ago

          Valve is probably perfectly happy with just making sure proton compatibility is good. They don’t expect developers to change their whole workflow to cater to the Deck, that’s why they’ve done so much work with proton.

          • woelkchen@lemmy.worldEnglish
            24·
            3 months ago

            Valve is probably perfectly happy with just making sure proton compatibility is good.

            Valve is happy that games break all the time? Yeah, sure buddy. If anybody at Valve was happy with that, maybe that Microsoft agent should lose their job.

            They don’t expect developers to change their whole workflow to cater to the Deck

            The point of cross-platform middleware is specifically not to “change their whole workflow”. 🙄

            that’s why they’ve done so much work with proton.

            Valve is also doing much work with SDL and so on to target native development, that’s why it’s embarrassing that they don’t target their own platform. All successful platform holders treat their platform as 1st class citizens: Sony targets PlayStation from day 1 of game development, so does Nintendo with Switch. Apple is not prioritizing Windows either.

            Failing platforms are those where the platform vendor doesn’t even believe enough in it to properly support it. Since over a decade Microsoft makes ARM-based Surface devices and to this day Microsoft has ported not a single game, not even casual stuff like Minesweeper, over to Windows ARM. “Microsoft is perfectly happy with just making sure Prism compatibility is good” and yet emulated applications crash, perform worse, and result in battery drain. Similar with Steam Deck: The only way to ensure games perform to their best and don’t unexpectedly break on an update is proper SteamOS native versions.

        • arefx@lemmy.mlEnglish
          32·
          3 months ago

          They are going to add Linux support the game is in alpha.

          • woelkchen@lemmy.worldEnglish
            23·
            3 months ago

            They are going to add Linux support the game is in alpha.

            That’s not day 1. Why do I need to say it over and over again? It’s not like I spelled it out already: CS2 had a Windows-only pre-release and the Linux port was only added to the formal release, resulting in the Linux port being very buggy to this day! Their own platform needs to be the top tier development target from day 1. How is that difficult to understand?

            • arefx@lemmy.mlEnglish
              22·
              3 months ago

              Because they are developing the game for windows first since that’s where 93% of the customers are. Are you even thinking this through?

              • woelkchen@lemmy.worldEnglish
                13·
                3 months ago

                Because they are developing the game for windows first since that’s where 93% of the customers are.

                Why not develop for Windows and Steam Deck equally then?

                Are you even thinking this through?

                Definitively more than you.

                • arefx@lemmy.mlEnglish
                  11·
                  3 months ago

                  You’re pretty funny but you clearly aren’t smart.

    • Thunderphenol@lemm.eeEnglish
      2·
      3 months ago

      It’s really not? You can play it perfectly fine on linux. Performs great for me with 0 issues so far.

      • woelkchen@lemmy.worldEnglish
        24·
        3 months ago

        It’s really not?

        The quality of Proton is not the point, the point is that they’re not dogfooding their own platform.

        You guys making the same comments over and over again. I can literally paste previous replies because nobody of you cares to actually read.

        • Thunderphenol@lemm.eeEnglish
          3·
          3 months ago

          That’s because I don’t understand your point. You complain about it being only for windows yet push away their efforts of bringing windows games to linux (which is proton). So indeed, the quality of proton is very much the point as it dictates the quality of the game on linux to a general extent.

          Not to mention that this IS an early development build, I would say that its perfectly reasonable for them to only make the early builds for windows since that is where a majority of the play testers are likely to be (not to mention that linux -> windows tools don’t exist unless you want to game on WSL2).

          So what are you trying to complain about? The fact that they aren’t exclusively pandering for steam deck users? If that is the case, I must admit that it’s very childish to just expect that and I hate other companies for making this the norm.

          • x00z@lemmy.worldEnglish
            11·
            3 months ago

            All of their games have native Linux builds. So if this one doesn’t support Linux out of the box, his opinion is quite valid.

            • Thunderphenol@lemm.eeEnglish
              3·
              3 months ago

              It’s not out of the box though is it? Considering that this is a game that hasn’t even been revealed to the world in the first place.

    • BaroqueInMind@lemmy.oneEnglish
      1113·
      3 months ago

      It’s almost as if they are a for-profit company that doesn’t want to waste development time on an OS that have significantly fewer players to sell to and will choose to optimize for Linux as an afterthought.

      I use Arch, btw and play only on Linux, so I’m not being biased, just speaking truths.

      • skulblaka@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        161·
        3 months ago

        Yeah but Valve, who is making this game, made SteamOS and the Steam Deck in house. It’s their own product. It would be a monumentally stupid move to release a first party game that doesn’t run on their own first party hardware.

        • 0xD@infosec.pubEnglish
          32·
          3 months ago

          It’s still niche. You’re living in your dream world, not reality. It’s the entire point of proton - not to have to create two versions of the game. As long as it’s compatible it’ll run nicely on their hardware.

      • Virkkunen@fedia.io
        72·
        3 months ago

        I wouldn’t say that’s the case because it’s Valve, and they work on a very unique way. Besides, the work they did with Proton, SteamOS and Steam Deck shows that at no point they believe developing for Linux is waste of efforts or an afterthought. They go out of the usual way to make things better for Linux. I fully expect them to port Deadlock to Linux once it hits beta or release.

      • woelkchen@lemmy.worldEnglish
        75·
        3 months ago

        It’s almost as if they are a for-profit company that doesn’t want to waste development time on an OS that have significantly fewer players to sell to and will choose to optimize for Linux as an afterthought.

        Yeah, why would Nintendo develop for Switch or Sony for PlayStation when it’s clearly a waste of development time and and money and Windows is clearly the superior development target?

        I’m not being biased, just speaking truths.

        No, you speak nothing of truth regarding game development has a platform holder.

    • pycorax@lemmy.worldEnglish
      38·
      3 months ago

      I expected this from the start once proton was introduced, just not from Valve themselves… Welp. It’s now inevitable.

      • woelkchen@lemmy.worldEnglish
        23·
        3 months ago

        I expected this from the start once proton was introduced, just not from Valve themselves… Welp. It’s now inevitable.

        Clueless people act as if Proton was like Java, a “write once, run everywhere” environment…🙄

        • pycorax@lemmy.worldEnglish
          43·
          3 months ago

          Not sure what you mean here with your sarcasm. Proton means that developers can just write games for Windows and expect to make that version compatible with Linux with minimal changes as opposed to making a native Linux version.

          As a developer myself, I know that it doesn’t make sense for a developer in most cases to write a Linux version and support it when the Linux user base is tiny by comparison. It happened with OS/2 and it can happen again. Not to mention Linux game developer tooling pales in comparison to Windows with DirectX.

          • woelkchen@lemmy.worldEnglish
            27·
            3 months ago

            Proton means that developers can just write games for Windows and expect to make that version compatible with Linux with minimal changes as opposed to making a native Linux version.

            SteamOS is Valve’s own OS. Steam Linux Runtime is Valve’s own development target. Steam Deck is Valve’s on hardware. It’s a stable platform that doesn’t move constantly like chasing Windows compatibility through reverse engineering. Win32 is not Java, Proton is not OpenJDK. Windows games on Proton break constantly. The only way into the future is proper SteamOS versions, not buggy afterthoughts.

            As a developer myself, I know that it doesn’t make sense for a developer in most cases to write a Linux version and support it when the Linux user base is tiny by comparison. It happened with OS/2 and it can happen again.

            Steam Deck is not OS/2. Steam Deck is more like a video game console and needs to be treated like one with proper ports instead of broken shit like CS2, especially for Valve’s own games. Portal on Nintendo Switch works better than CS2 on Steam Deck because it’s a proper port, not an afterthought.

            Stop repeating the same false arguments to me over and over again, as repeating those would make them right. If anyone of you would ever be put in charge of PlayStation, that entire business would collapse within months.

            Not to mention Linux game developer tooling pales in comparison to Windows with DirectX.

            Maybe Valve should improve that for their own platform then instead of relying of tools by a hostile competitor. It’s just dumb.

    • mox@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      112·
      3 months ago

      I’m with you in principle, but I think it’s unlikely that Valve are building the game themselves, given that they haven’t done much of that in ages.

      It’s reasonable to think their first priorities were finding a development studio [Edit: or even in-house developers] capable producing a good game, and helping them to do so. If the developers are most familiar with Windows tools and APIs, then the path to a successful game would be letting them use those, at least to begin with.

      Let’s just hope that they’re being guided along to way toward design decisions that make a native port relatively easy if the game turns out to be good.

      Edit:

      The project is reportedly led by “IceFrog”, which looked like a studio name when I first read it, but it’s apparently a person. So maybe this is in-house development after all. Great! It would be nice to see Valve making significant games again.

      Nevertheless, gathering a team with the talent and vision to make a good game is harder than finding people who can learn a certain API or platform, so if they have the former, it would make sense to let them target the platform they already know and get the game out the door. Doing it in-house just makes it even easier for Valve’s linux folks to guide them in design choices that would simplify multiplatform support later. (Cross-platform development isn’t all that hard if you plan for it from the start instead of painting yourself into a corner.) If the game is well received, it would then make sense to invest more time into training the devs on linux and doing a linux-native port.

      Or to put it another way: Yes, Valve has an OS that keeps them independent from Windows, but that’s just one tool in their kit. Proton is another tool. That gives Valve flexibility in how they bring a game to market, and how they prioritize/schedule various phases of the project. This still-unannounced game might be Windows-only for now, but I would not assume that will be forever.

      • woelkchen@lemmy.worldEnglish
        24·
        3 months ago

        If that studio’s developers are most familiar with Windows tools and APIs, then the path to a successful game would be letting them use those, at least to begin with.

        So you’re saying, if Sony or Nintendo made a new console and contracted an outside developer, that developer should develop for Windows instead of the new consoles because they are unfamiliar with the new tools and APIs? Why even develop using Source Engine (2)? Why not also give in to a total Unreal Engine monopoly because that’s what every game developer knows? CS2 on Steam Deck is bad right now.

        • mox@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          52·
          3 months ago

          No, that is not what I said at all. Either you’ve misunderstood, or you’re arguing in bad faith. Given that you’re now pushing an unrealistic all-or-nothing point of view and putting words in my mouth, I think it’s some of both.

          • 0xD@infosec.pubEnglish
            52·
            3 months ago

            Don’t waste your time. These people are blinded by idealism and don’t care about reality, just being angry.

  • Cris16228@lemmy.todayEnglish
    15·
    3 months ago

    Anyone interested in an invite?

    • Yes, I’ll remove you after the invite.
    • No, we can’t play together.
    • Yes, drop your profile here/dm

    If you don’t get the mail, this is probably due to playtest schedule, they may give you access when the playtest is open, after that you can always play vs bots

    playtest schedule

    Or https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/4511003785958903445/

    Edit: What have I done? :O so many users want to try it

    • SSJMarx@lemm.eeEnglish
      5·
      3 months ago

      They must have just made that change, I got it the other day from someone who I had just added to my list.

  • Wilzax@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    3 months ago

    I vow to invite everyone from this thread if I receive an invite myself. https://steamcommunity.com/id/Wilzax/

    Edit: added every friend code or profile link I could find under this post. Quick links are single-use so I couldn’t add those.

    Game invites take an unknown number of hours to reach your account once sent. They seem to go out in waves. Happy gaming everyone!

  • bionicjoey@lemmy.caEnglish
    9·
    3 months ago

    For the unaware, Deadlock is a 3rd person shooter MOBA. It feels like a mix of Dota and Overwatch/Team Fortress

    So like SMITE?

    • simple@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      101·
      3 months ago

      Not really, SMITE is a moba that happens to be 3rd person, Deadlock actually plays like a 3rd person shooter that needs proper aiming and headshots and a much faster pace.

      • bionicjoey@lemmy.caEnglish
        4·
        3 months ago

        I see. This is probably a pretty niche reference nowadays, but is it more similar to Monday Night Combat? That was an actual shooter IIRC and had moba mechanics like lanes and creeps.

      • drphungky@lemmy.worldEnglish
        11·
        3 months ago

        Good, cause I played the Smite 2 alpha and it was kinda garbage. I literally said out loud “this is like Dota for babies”. It didn’t even have good FPS mechanics to make up for no depth.

    • Virkkunen@fedia.io
      5·
      3 months ago

      It’s actually closer to Battleborn. Like the other commenter said, it’s more of a third person shooter with MOBA elements. There’s focus on movement (you can dash, double jump, crouch slide, some characters fly), headshots and distance change the damage and melee/parry are just a button, while every character has guns as their man attack means. For the moba elements, it changes a bit since there’s 4 lanes and it’s a 6x6.

  • qooqie@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    3 months ago

    Icefrog is an extremely talented dev so this game is for sure to be real fun. I trust in the frog as a life long dota player

  • JDPoZ@lemmy.worldEnglish
    91·
    3 months ago

    Hello fellow gamers! Can I trouble any of you for an invite??? 😁😁😁