How to get into the Deadlock beta

After adopting an interesting tactic of staying silent about its new MOBA shooter even as more and more players started getting into its beta, Valve has finally acknowledged Deadlock. This comes after several months of invites to a closed playtest of Deadlock reached thousands of Steam users' inboxes.

Originally, everyone playing Deadlock was instructed not to talk about it, though that didn't stop dozens of gameplay videos and impression threads from appearing online. Now that it's got a name and a store page, Deadlock has become one of the most-played games on Steam every day, and by the look of it, the number of invites going out is on the rise.

How do you get into the Deadlock beta?

On its Steam store page, Deadlock is listed as "limited access," which means you can get in one of two ways:

• Randomly get invited by Valve
• Get invited by a friend who's already in the playtest

"Access to Deadlock is currently limited to friend invites via our playtesters," is the official language on its store page.

Now that Deadlock has a Steam store page, you can see which of your friends are already in the beta over on the right side. The way the player count is adding up, yours might look like mine now, saying "20 friends already own this game." That means you know which of your pals to shoot a kind little DM to asking to pretty please get you in.

After a friend hooks you up with an invite, you'll get a Steam notification that looks like this:

How to invite a friend to Deadlock

Unlike when things were still hush hush, you don't have to jump through hoops and provide a friend's Steam profile and attached email. Now you can just invite your friends to Deadlock in the in-game menu. 

• Click "invite your friends" in the bottom right or Deadlock's start menu.
• This will bring up a list of your current Steam friends where you can click a button to invite whoeveryou like.
• Valve does say "Invites are typically sent out within 1-2 days, but sometimes may take longer," so bear that in mind.

If you're not lucky enough to know a guy who knows a guy, then you may win the jackpot by doing nothing. Valve has been gradually sending out Deadlock invites in waves, and in the last few months, the number of playtesters has skyrocketed. The invites really do appear random: it's safe to assume Valve was focused on getting feedback from experienced Dota 2 players early on, but now, people with little-to-zero experience with Valve's multiplayer games can also make the cut.

There's no evidence that you can juice your chances at a Deadlock invite by suddenly playing lots of Dota, as some attempted with CS:GO during Counter-Strike 2's playtest last year, so no need to waste the energy. Mathematically, your chances get better every day. In early August, Deadlock reached a record 18,000 concurrent players. A few weeks later, that record is over 89,000.

So if you're eager to play Deadlock, keep a close eye on your Steam notifications and email inbox associated with your account.