Don't Defend Valve For Its Deadlock 'Leak'

Summary

• Deadlock is Valve's biggest open secret – the unannounced game already has tens of thousands of players, despite never having been so much as hinted at.
• A journalist at The Verge wrote about the game despite there being a pop-up in the game that politely asks people not to share the game. People are acting as if this was a violation of journalistic ethics. It was not.
• The reporter did his duty, and quite frankly, if Valve wanted the game to be a secret, it would be. Stop caping for corporations.

Despite Valve’s steadfast refusal to acknowledge that it’s actively developing a game, everybody already knows it exists. The upcoming shooter, Deadlock, has had swelling player counts over the last few weeks. There were about 6000 people playing it a week ago, and now, at the time of writing, the 24 hour peak is 23,000 players. Despite Valve having never announced the game or even hinted at it, it’s out there, and people are playing it.

The player count is growing exponentially, indicating that there’s some sort of closed alpha or beta test going on. Some players said they received invites to try the game directly from Steam, while others say that they were granted access by other players. It’s not very hush hush, considering how many outlets are actively reporting on the game’s growing player count, and that there are tens of thousands of people already playing. There are already guides and tier rankings. Gameplay videos have been popping up online, too. There’s even a subreddit where people are actively discussing how it plays.

And yet, when a reporter at The Verge finally wrote an official preview of the early development build, a large contingent of players who are inexplicably caping for Valve got incredibly upset. Why? The article mentions that the game has a pop-up requesting that players “not share anything about the game with anyone”. The writer mentions that he didn’t click “OK”, and instead hit escape, watching the notification disappear into the ether.

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The Verge Did Nothing Wrong

There’s been a lot of backlash to this preview, largely centred around the fact that the journalist ‘leaked’ the build, proving that game journalists can’t be trusted, and that it’s disrespectful to the dev team. A now removed reader-submitted community note said “The author blatantly ignored an informal NDA”.

There are a few things to discuss here. Firstly, there is no such thing as an informal NDA. NDAs are legal contracts with legal repercussions. A pop-up politely requesting that players not share information about the game is not an NDA. It’s not even an embargo, which is a non-legally binding agreement to not publish something until a certain time. It’s nothing. No agreement was made, and no agreement was broken. It’s got as much tangibility as a handshake – perhaps less.

Secondly, the idea that game journalists can’t be trusted to keep secrets is, well, mostly correct. Journalists have to prioritise reporting on the facts over niceness. That’s kind of the point. Despite constant accusations of journalists buddying up to corporations and acting as a de facto PR wing, this is not actually what journalists do. Often, talking about the industry means companies get mad at you for saying things they’d rather you not say. This can result in companies slapping you with lawsuits, blacklisting you from early access to future games, and generally pretending you don’t exist so that you’re at a disadvantage to other journalists who won’t make them look bad. Journalistic ethics can be difficult, but there was no real reason to keep Valve’s non-secret from getting out, even when considering the likely repercussions.

Thirdly, is it disrespectful to the team? Sure, I guess, but refer to my second point. The Verge’s reporting was not unethical, it didn’t break any agreements, and access to the game was granted exactly as intended: through the invite system. If YouTubers and Redditors are already openly talking about the game and thousands of people are playing it despite it being a ‘secret’, it’s news that should be reported on. I’m sure people at Valve are angry about it – the reporter was swiftly banned from matchmaking, and there’s a possibility Valve might blacklist The Verge for this – but really, there wasn’t any wrongdoing here.

If Valve Wanted Deadlock To Be Secret, It Would Be

A key point here is that there were no mechanisms in place to prevent journalists from reporting on the game. No NDAs were signed, the invite system is an open friends-and-family one, and there are no player caps. Valve is not some small independent developer that doesn’t have the resources to institute these protections – it absolutely could have, if it wanted to stymie any and all leaks.

If I were to put on my conspiracy hat, I’d say all of this was intentional. What better way to build up hype for a game nobody would otherwise be excited about than to make it a huge open secret fuelled by leaks? I find it hard to imagine that Deadlock, a team-based shooter with MOBA elements, was going to make a massive splash in the already saturated live-service shooter genre without this word of mouth.

I’m not putting on my conspiracy hat, for the record. I don’t know why Valve does what it does, I’m just saying that it would be a pretty effective marketing strategy. Most importantly, Valve knew what it was doing when it neglected to add these failsafes to its build, and it would have locked the game down if it wanted to. It didn’t do that. Draw your own conclusions from that information.

Deadlock

WHERE TO PLAY

Deadlock is an upcoming game from Valve which seemingly combines elements of the MOBA and hero shooter genres. As it is still in early development, gameplay and assets may be incomplete. Access is granted via friend invites.