Deadlock matchmaking is now open 24/7—plus there's a new, snazzier minimap and a low priority queue for bad behaviour

An image of Ivy who, despite everything, is becoming one of Deadlock's most beloved characters.

(Image credit: Valve)

Deadlock, Valve's not-so-secret anymore MOBA, has done away with its playtest time restrictions, as per an update that dropped yesterday.

As anyone who's been playing the beta of Deadlock (which is shaping up to be the next big thing by a lot of metrics) will tell you, the game's locked testing session times—typically 1 pm to 3 am Monday to Thursday, and 9 am to 3 am Friday to Sunday, usually accounting for your local timezone—were the bane of many looking to get some early morning matches in. I've been caught out a few times myself, taking an early lunch break only to be turned away at the door because I had the audacity to eat before 1 pm.

There's a few other things to be excited about. For starters, there's a new minimap—who cares, you might ask, but if you've played any MOBA for any amount of time, you'll know that you'll be staring at your minimap whenever you aren't shooting or fighting something.

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A minimap from your average game of Deadlock. — Old map...(Image credit: Valve)

This gives it a pretty backdrop, and is also supposed to highlight neutral camps (or creeps) with a glow around the buildings they're in. I wasn't able to see this in the bot match I hopped into, alas. Also, the orange lane is green now. The impact of this colour change on the metagame is tremendous, and we should see the fallout of it in the coming days.

There's also a low-priority queue, too. This'll be familiar to anyone coming over from Dota 2, but essentially, abandoning games or being rude will put you in a queue with other sinners, where you'll have to complete a few rancid games before you're allowed to play with the good kids again. "Regularly misreporting players will result in you losing the reporting function and may in some cases cause you to go into low priority as well."

The last major change is that your first "flex" slot, which allows you to plonk Weapon, Vitality, or Spirit items into it willy-nilly, will be unlocked after you've killed the second enemy Walker, not the first. This is actually pretty big, since it slows the power scaling of a team on the offensive—mind, having enough Souls banked to take advantage of a flex slot that early on is pretty rare, anyway.

As per usual with Deadlock, Valve is in its early iterating stages—which means patches are both frequent and often massive, too large to list here. If you want the full list of tuning tweaks and further details, check out Valve's official forum post. Alas, there's no sign of Slork yet.

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Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.