Lore and Setting

Deadlock is set in the Cursed Apple, Valve's occult, alternate-history New York, where every match is a ritual in which two Patrons, the Hidden King and the Archmother, compete to be summoned. Valve tells its story in short hero texts and update pages rather than a campaign, and has given no year for the setting.

1:42 Deadlock is set in the Cursed Apple, Valve's name for an occult, alternate-history New York where magic, monsters and occult industry are part of everyday life, and every match is a ritual in which two ancient Patrons, the Hidden King and the Archmother, compete to be summoned (Valve, Jan 22, 2026). The heroes are the people drawn into that ritual: detectives, monster hunters, a vampire, a gargoyle, a demonic goat, a chess master, a nurse from a possession ward and a self-proclaimed king of the rats, each fighting for reasons of their own. Valve has written no campaign. It tells the story in short pieces instead: a paragraph for each new hero in its Steam posts, the update pages for Old Gods, New Blood and City Never Sleeps, the map itself, and a lore text for each hero inside the game. This page gathers what those texts say. Where they are silent, as on the year the game is set, we say so.

Inside a dark Gothic hall with tall arches, a huge black-robed shape with antlers and yellow eyes holds out glowing golden hands over a fiery, twisted statue on a circular dais; ornate golden rings glow on pedestals left and right. — A vaulted hall lit orange: a giant hooded figure with antlers and glowing hands hangs above a burning figure on a round platform, with glowing rings on stands at both sides. Valve

Quick facts

Setting	The Cursed Apple, an occult New York
Era	Not given by Valve; outlets describe early to mid 20th-century style
The conflict	A ritual to summon one of two Patrons
The Patrons	The Hidden King (Amber base) and the Archmother (Sapphire base)
Map landmarks	Times Square, Central Park, Umbria University, the Stock Exchange, Chinatown, the Seaport Dock
Where the story is told	Valve's hero posts and update pages, and each hero's lore text in the game
Heroes	44 (Oct 26, 2026), each with their own story (Heroes)

Sources: Valve: Old Gods, New Blood, Jan 22, 2026; Valve: City Never Sleeps, Sep 29, 2026; deadlock-api: generic data (the game files), read Oct 26, 2026.

The Cursed Apple

3:24 The Cursed Apple is New York with the supernatural in plain view. Valve's posts welcome each hero to "the streets of the Cursed Apple" and "the city that never sleeps" (Valve, Aug 18, 2025), and the City Never Sleeps page presents the map as "An updated visitor's guide to New York City". The city has its own institutions for the occult: Fairfax Industries, which Valve calls "the beating heart of the Occult Industrial Complex" (Valve, Oct 13, 2026), the Marble Hill Possession Ward, and Umbria University, which offers "the nation's finest Bibliomancy program".

Valve gives no year. Gamereactor places the game in "an alternative version of 1940s New York" (Gamereactor, Mar 1, 2026), while PCGamesN describes "early 20th-century aesthetics with urban fantasy and magical realism" (PCGamesN, Aug 9, 2026). Both are outlets' readings of the art style, not dates from Valve.

6:18 PC Gamer described the City Never Sleeps map as three moods, a bright city center, a haunted university and a shadowy stock exchange, and called Deadlock "one of the moodiest MOBAs out there" (PC Gamer, Sep 29, 2026).

The Patrons and the Ritual

7:25 Every match is a ritual. Gamereactor sums it up: two teams fight to complete a ritual that summons their Patron, who grants one wish (Gamereactor, Mar 1, 2026). Valve's own texts use the same frame: Silver "plans on summoning a god" and knows "all that the ritual requires" (Valve, Feb 2, 2026), Venator "joins the ritual" (Valve, Feb 5, 2026), and Violet "approaches the ritual with the same precision she does her art" (Valve, Oct 16, 2026). Old Gods, New Blood opened with "The ritual takes form..." (Valve, Jan 22, 2026).

5:44 Old Gods, New Blood gave the two Patrons names and new forms. The Hidden King "exists in the cracks of the city, waiting for his followers to usher him into the light", and is tied to a boarded-up apartment in Hell's Kitchen; the Archmother "has always guided the founders' hands" (Valve, Jan 22, 2026). In the game files the Amber base belongs to the Hidden King and the Sapphire base to the Archmother (deadlock-api, read Oct 26, 2026). In play, the Patron is the final objective in each base: kill the enemy's and the ritual is yours (Objectives).

The heroes do not all fight for faith. The Rat King's lore text says he summoned a Patron "to hedge his bets" in his plan to take Long Island as the rat nation of Ratannia, and Solomon, Valve says, approaches the city "as if it's one giant chessboard" when "the Patrons come calling" (Valve, Oct 9, 2026).

The Maelstrom and the astral gates

The deeper history of the Cursed Apple appears only in fragments. Vindicta's lore text in the game files says she was "brought back during the first Maelstrom" after dying in the Salem Witch Trials (deadlock-api, read Oct 26, 2026), but Valve has published no account of what the Maelstrom was or when it happened. Descriptions of it elsewhere come from fan wikis, which we do not cite.

The game also speaks of astral gates linking Earth to other realms. PCGamesN describes Abrams and Apollo as Ixians, "demon-like folk who came to Earth through one of the astral gates linked to other realms" (PCGamesN, Aug 9, 2026), and Valve's Apollo post says he "channels Ixia's might" (Valve, Feb 12, 2026). Kelvin's lore text tells of an expedition to "an 8th astral gate hidden in the arctic" that never returned (deadlock-api).

Factions and institutions

4:03 Several organizations recur across the heroes' stories, all from their lore texts in the game files unless a Valve post is linked (deadlock-api, read Oct 26, 2026):

Fairfax Industries, the arms maker at the center of the "Occult Industrial Complex". McGinnis heads its military research and development, Pocket is its missing heir, Arin Fairfax, and Deadman Danny is its "most valuable salesman", flying its Chimera Mk1 (Valve, Oct 13, 2026).
The Baxter Society, an international order of monster hunters. Grey Talon is a founding member, Calico a former member who found killing people for money more profitable, and Shiv a member whose criminal past worries the others.
The Occult Security and Investigation Commission (OSIC), "a black box government organization that makes the CIA look transparent"; Haze works in its Sandman Division.
The Venators of St. Benedict, a Vatican-sanctioned order of hunters of supernatural predators, Venator's order.
The Friends of Humanity, a new inquisition of the descendants of John Hathorne, at war with Vindicta.
The Tunnel Rats, who run trade between the boroughs through underground tunnels: Mo & Krill.
The North American Baronies, the vampires' domain, where Drifter is "a marked man".
The Marble Hill Possession Ward, where Nurse Harrow treats the possessed (Valve, Oct 20, 2026).
Lost Whisper, a prison for the most dangerous occultists, warded by ritualists of seven nations, which once held Seven.

Places on the map

7:56 The map is a version of Manhattan. Since City Never Sleeps its three lanes are named York, with the Stock Exchange, the Seaport Dock and the Old Fairfax Factories; Broadway, with Uptown, Times Square and Downtown; and Greenwich, with Umbria University, Central Park and the Brownstones (Valve, Sep 29, 2026). Between them lie four Districts: Theater, Chinatown, the Haunted Lot and the Plaza. Central Park's Hangman's Elm is 300 years old, and the Chinatown Bell Tower rings across the map. Map and Lanes covers what each place does in a match.

11:40 The monsters of the city are part of the setting too. City Never Sleeps turned the neutral camps into Haunts with names like Gutter Ghouls, Barrel Mimics, Past Dues, Crabbage Pots, the Festival Spirit and Shrooms (Valve, Sep 29, 2026), covered on Neutral Camps and Jungle.

Off the map, each player has the Hideout, which Valve introduced on Aug 18, 2025 as "your personal area to play around in while waiting for a match", with room for "future opportunities for personalization, achievements, and events" (Valve, Aug 18, 2025).

The heroes in brief

Every hero has a place in the city. The table gives each one's story in a line, from Valve's posts or the hero's lore text in the game; each hero's own page has more, and Heroes lists them all with their release dates.

Hero	Who they are
Abrams	A hard-drinking detective who found The Tome on his desk with a note: "Don't let them have it"
Apollo	A fencer from North Ixia, sent to New York "for his own safety"
Baba	Central Park's pigeon lady, who sips tea with her birds on the same bench
Bebop	A scrap golem built by a junkyard attendant, working nights to pay for her medicine
Billy	"A white hot ball of rage", a demonic goat furious at something
Calico	A former Baxter Society hunter turned assassin, with a sphinx cat named Ava
Celeste	"Coney Island's biggest star", a unicorn hiding in a side show
Deadman Danny	Fairfax Industries' test pilot and salesman, who has died many times
The Doorman	The doorman of The Baroness Hotel, a being from another plane
Drifter	"A nameless horror", an ancient vampire who scorns vampire law
Dynamo	A professor reduced to a tiny dying star by a rift in Central Park
Graves	Darcy Graves, who talks to the dead with a severed lich hand
Grey Talon	A founding Baxter Society monster hunter called back from retirement
Haze	An OSIC agent of the Sandman Division who enters dreams
Holliday	A small-town sheriff tracking a killer to New York
Infernus	A fire creature from another plane, mellowed into bar work
Ivy	A gargoyle who came to life to save two humans
Kelvin	A scientist found frozen after an arctic expedition to an astral gate
Lady Geist	A society lady who regained her youth through a pact with a spirit
Lash	A brawler whose whole lore text is one blunt insult
McGinnis	Head of Fairfax Industries' military research
Mina	A rich heiress whose fiance was assassinated; a vampire, Valve says
Mirage	Bodyguard to a Djinn ambassador in New York
Mo & Krill	Members of the Tunnel Rats, who run the underground trade
Nurse Harrow	A nurse at the Marble Hill Possession Ward
Paige	A rare book dealer's daughter who brings stories to life
Paradox	Both a time artifact and a thieves' guild
Pocket	Arin Fairfax, the heir to Fairfax Industries, left for dead
Rat King	Ruler of the New York Warrens, planning the rat nation of Ratannia
Rem	"An accidental stowaway from the world of dreams"
Seven	An occultist once held in Lost Whisper prison
Shiv	A Baxter Society member with a criminal past
Silver	A bounty hunter and werewolf
Sinclair	The Magnificent Sinclair, a stage magician
Solomon	A chess master who treats the city as a chessboard
Venator	A hunter of the Venators of St. Benedict
Victor	A man stitched from parts, searching for his maker
Vindicta	A Salem witch-trial victim brought back to fight the Friends of Humanity
Violet	An art student who came to the Cursed Apple at 12
Viscous	A psychic sea anemone from under the Bermuda Triangle
Vyper	A prisoner who has broken out of every major prison in the tri-state area
Warden	Heir to a line of militant alchemists
Wraith	The cornerstone of New York's gambling scene
Yamato	A swordswoman who once helped lead the syndicate Seventh Moon, by the game's Japanese lore text (the English text could not be read)

Sources: Valve's hero posts (Six New Heroes, Billy, The Doorman, Drifter, Rem, Celeste, Baba, Holliday and others) and the heroes' lore texts in the game files, read through deadlock-api on Oct 26, 2026.

Frequently asked questions

What is the story of Deadlock? Deadlock's story is a ritual in an occult New York: two teams of heroes fight to summon one of two Patrons, the Hidden King or the Archmother (Valve, Jan 22, 2026). Valve tells it through hero texts rather than a campaign.

Where is Deadlock set? Deadlock is set in the Cursed Apple, an alternate, supernatural New York whose map includes Times Square, Central Park, Chinatown and the Stock Exchange (Valve, Sep 29, 2026).

Who are the Patrons in Deadlock? Deadlock's Patrons are the Hidden King, who "exists in the cracks of the city", and the Archmother, who "has always guided the founders' hands"; each team's base belongs to one (Valve, Jan 22, 2026).

What is the Cursed Apple in Deadlock? The Cursed Apple is Deadlock's name for its version of New York City, used throughout Valve's posts, as in "the streets of the Cursed Apple" (Valve, Aug 18, 2025).

What is the Maelstrom in Deadlock? Deadlock's game files mention "the first Maelstrom" in Vindicta's lore text, but Valve has published no explanation of the Maelstrom as of Oct 26, 2026 (deadlock-api).

When is Deadlock set? Valve has not given a year for Deadlock; Gamereactor places it in "an alternative version of 1940s New York" (Gamereactor, Mar 1, 2026).

Sources

The Complete Lore Of Valve's Next Game | Deadlock Story Explained, OhHeckItsTristan, Mar 28, 2026 (video)
Deadlock MAJOR Update: "City Never Sleeps", Dead Air, Oct 2, 2026 (video)
Deadlock - Old Gods, New Blood, Valve, Jan 22, 2026
Old Gods, New Blood, Valve, Jan 22, 2026
Deadlock - City Never Sleeps, Valve, Sep 29, 2026
Six New Heroes, Valve, Aug 18, 2025
Billy Comes in Swinging, Valve, Aug 20, 2025
The Doorman, at your Service, Valve, Aug 22, 2025
Drifter Emerges from the Shadows, Valve, Aug 27, 2025
Holliday, Vyper, Calico, and The Magnificent Sinclair, Valve, Jan 17, 2025
Rem Enters The City That Never Sleeps, Valve, Jan 26, 2026
The Curse Beckons for Silver, Valve, Feb 2, 2026
Some Are Merciful, The Venator Is Not, Valve, Feb 5, 2026
Introducing The Dazzling Celeste, Valve, Feb 9, 2026
Apollo - A Cut Above, Valve, Feb 12, 2026
Mind the Birds!, Valve, Oct 6, 2026
Make Your Move., Valve, Oct 9, 2026
Fairfax Industries Employee Spotlight, Valve, Oct 13, 2026
Paint the Town, Valve, Oct 16, 2026
Shh... This Won't Hurt a Bit., Valve, Oct 20, 2026
Assets API: heroes and generic data, deadlock-api (the game files), read Oct 26, 2026
A Beginners guide to Deadlock, Gamereactor, Mar 1, 2026
Deadlock isn't even 'out' yet, but Valve's new game is a true monster in the making, PCGamesN (Ken Allsop), Aug 9, 2026
Deadlock's gigantic new update gives its city a spooky new coat of paint, PC Gamer (Tyler Colp), Sep 29, 2026

Moments

The Complete Lore Of Valve's Next Game | Deadlock Story Explained

OhHeckItsTristan

1:42 Deadlock is set in the Cursed Apple, Valve's name for an occult, alternate-history New York where magic, monsters and…
3:24 The Cursed Apple is New York with the supernatural in plain view. Valve's posts welcome each hero to "the streets of…
7:25 Every match is a ritual. Gamereactor sums it up: two teams fight to complete a ritual that summons their Patron, who…
5:44 Old Gods, New Blood gave the two Patrons names and new forms. The Hidden King "exists in the cracks of the city…
4:03 Several organizations recur across the heroes' stories, all from their lore texts in the game files unless a Valve…

Deadlock MAJOR Update: "City Never Sleeps"

Dead Air

6:18 PC Gamer described the City Never Sleeps map as three moods, a bright city center, a haunted university and a shadowy…
7:56 The map is a version of Manhattan. Since City Never Sleeps its three lanes are named York, with the Stock Exchange…
11:40 The monsters of the city are part of the setting too. City Never Sleeps turned the neutral camps into Haunts with…