Valve's leaked shooter had nearly 1,000 concurrent players over the past weekend.
Earlier this month, leaked screenshots, supposedly of an in-development hero shooter from Valve, leaked online, showing characters, maps, artwork, and more. Just a few days later, alleged gameplay footage of Valve's new shooter, apparently named Deadlock, leaked online as well, showing 19 hero characters and BioShock Infinite-style rails.
Curiously, Deadlock has its very own entry on SteamDB, the tracking database for Valve's own storefront. According to the tracker, 996 people were playing Deadlock over the past weekend, which marks an all-time high concurrent player count for the hero shooter, which hasn't even been teased, let alone fully announced, by the developer itself.
For a little added context, this is more concurrent PC players than Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has had in nearly two months, since early April when its concurrent player count dipped below 1,000 for the first time.
When Deadlock was first leaked online, one Valve leaker claimed that it was currently in the closed alpha stage of playtesting. That could be why we've seen so many leaks of the new Valve game so far and why nearly 1,000 people played it over just the past weekend. Valve needs feedback on Deadlock, and so it would naturally expand the number of people testing it out early.
Leakers and audiences have been speculating that Valve could be about to reveal Deadlock, but an official reveal has yet to materialize.
Check out all the upcoming PC games for more of what's to come on Valve's storefront.