Deadlock is a new upcoming shooter game developed by Valve. The game has been in a private alpha since 2023, but more and more players have been joining in August, and Valve recently lifted the media embargo on the Alpha playtest. Since Valve lifted the publicity restrictions on August 23, viewership has exploded for the title on Twitch, which has hosted the majority of the viewership for the title.
Valve is known well for their private nature and keeping things quiet, and Deadlock only recently was officially added to the Steam store. Currently, there is no official Deadlock category on Twitch, so streamers have been playing the category under the DEADLOCK category, which is a VR game which was released in 2016. Viewership for this VR game has been extremely low in past years, meaning we can accurately measure viewership for Valve’s new shooter through this category on Twitch.
Since August 23, when the media restrictions were lifted, Deadlock has generated 4.66M Hours Watched on Twitch, particularly impressive for a title currently in a private invite-only Alpha test. The game has been supported by some of Twitch’s most popular creators, and it reached 119.6K Peak Viewers on August 25, thanks to the support of these popular streamers.
Since the media restrictions were lifted, Deadlock has been enjoying a consistent and high viewership on the purple livestreaming platform. The game has maintained 43K Average Viewers since August 23, and streamers have enjoyed particularly high viewership for their broadcasts, with an average of 114 Viewers per Channel recorded. As it stands, Deadlock is the 11th-most-watched category on Twitch for the selected data period.
Valve’s new shooter has been described as a mixture of the highly popular MOBA and hero shooter genres. Valve have previous experience with both of these genres; Dota 2 is one of the world’s most popular MOBA games, and Team Fortress 2 was one of the original influences for the hero shooter genre. Deadlock reached its peak of 89K players on Steam two days ago, and it currently ranks as one of the top 20 most-played games on Valve’s platform. Once Deadlock goes public, we can expect a high influx of players and streamers excited to test out Valve’s new title.
As mentioned, coverage of Deadlock on Twitch has been supported by some of the platform’s most popular creators. Shroud and summit1g are two of North America’s most popular content creators on Twitch, and they received 592K Hours Watched and 404K HW since August 23, respectively.
Other popular global streamers such as Recrent and C_a_k_e received high viewership from audiences excited for Valve’s new spin on the Dota 2 formula, but generally, streamers who had esports experience in either Dota 2 or a hero shooter were the most-watched streamers for the Deadlock playtest. This includes creators such as singsing and Nix who were previously Dota 2 esports professionals, but also many former Overwatch players.
xQc was the only creator outside of Twitch to place highly in our viewership rankings here. The Canadian is a former Overwatch professional player, and this combined with his generally sizeable audience helped him to become the only non-Twitch streamer to generate enough viewership to rank here. The Canadian received slightly more viewership than alanzoka and A_Seagull, who are both also ex-professional Overwatch players turned streamers. A_Seagull’s hero shooter experience goes even deeper: the American is known as one of the greatest Soldier players in Team Fortress 2’s history, before he made the jump to Overwatch.
Most Watched Shooter Games on Twitch, August 23 - 27
Last but not least, Surefour reached 100K Hours Watched, outperforming xQc. Surefour is another Canadian former Overwatch professional, and he was one of the more active players in this ranking. The Canadian streamer reached 32 hours of broadcasting time for Deadlock on Twitch, and he has been highlighting his hero shooter experience throughout his time streaming the private play test.
Other popular Twitch streamers such as MOONMOON, forsen, and ohnePixel have also experienced great success in their short streams of Deadlock, and we can likely expect many more of Twitch’s most popular creators to try out the newest release from Valve. Keep an eye on Deadlock’s viewership statistics with Streams Charts, and track who is boosting the game’s publicity the most with their gameplay broadcasts.
