Deadlock, the upcoming MOBA shooter developed by Valve, was a very open secret in video game circles despite never being announced. Valve changed that over the weekend by quietly releasing a tiny teaser and publishing the store page, which is as good an announcement as any.
The store page is still very bare when it comes to information. It says Deadlock is an action game that’s in “early development,” and it’s only available to playtesters and through friend invites. There’s also a little art, including the aforementioned teaser, although it comes with a disclaimer that the art assets could be “temporary.”
Players can now wish list it though, and if third-party tracking site SteamDB is any indication, they have been in droves. At the time of this writing, it’s 59th in terms of wish lists and has over 42,000 followers.
Deadlock’s life cycle has been unconventional so far. It was the subject of multiple detailed leaks before it started amassing high concurrent player counts on Steam. People were being invited to playtest it and those people could send out invites to their friends, so its player base steadily grew behind the scenes. It had over 2,000 concurrent players by the time August hit, and hit its highest peak so far at 89,203 players on Sunday.
Valve did try to stop people from sharing gameplay online. According to The Verge, players saw an “early development build” message after booting up the game that read: “Do not share anything about the game with anyone.” You could agree to it, but it wasn’t legally binding and you could just close the window and continue playing. So, yes, there are a lot of screenshots and details out there if you want to find them. There are even people streaming it on Twitch.
Deadlock is a 6v6 hero shooter like Overwatch on a MOBA-like map with multiple lanes and minions like League of Legends. It feels like Valve included everything but the kitchen sink, with a mix of some traits from its other titles like Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2, and elements like guardrails from titles like Apex Legends that encourage fast and dynamic map traversal. Valve hasn’t revealed any plans for the game beyond playtesting, but if the leaks and streamers are anything to go by, Deadlock certainly has an audience it can capitalize on.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.