Valve’s 6v6 hero shooter has now been formally unveiled, with the company confirming that the title is still in early development.

A new game announcement by Valve isn’t something that we see to much of in today’s day and age, but the company has formally unveiled its next major title. Deadlock, a third-person 6v6 hero shooter, has been in the rumour mill frequently in recent weeks, and even though it hadn’t been officially announced, it was being widely played courtesy of ongoing testing, making it a quite a poorly kept secret, to say the very least.

Now, Valve has formally lifted the lid on the shooter, with a Steam page going live for it. As per the Steam page, Deadlock can only be accessed by those who have received a friend invite from its current playtesters- though apparently the game is still attracting players in droves. As per SteamDB, at the time of writing, it has over 45,000 concurrent players, with a peak of over 89,000 earlier in the day.

It’s worth pointing out that Deadlock is described as being still quite early in development, with Valve mentioning explicitly on its Steam page that the game is currently using “lots of temporary art and experimental gameplay”- so keep that in mind as you dive in. Things are very likely going to change for the shooter in the weeks and months ahead.

In contrast, another recently launched hero shooter, Concord, has unfortunately had quite a torrid launch.