Steam Player Count

Deadlock's all-time peak is 303,347 concurrent Steam players on Oct 16, 2026, the day Violet was released, as SteamDB measured. On Oct 26, 2026 it was 9th on Steam with a 24-hour peak of 267,268, although it is still an invite-only playtest.

Deadlock's all-time peak is 303,347 concurrent Steam players, reached on Oct 16, 2026, the day the hero Violet was released, as SteamDB's chart measured it. On Oct 26, 2026 Steam's own chart of the most played games ranked Deadlock 9th, with 115,693 players in game at 12:33 UTC and a 24-hour peak of 267,268. Those are remarkable numbers for a game that cannot be bought: Deadlock is an invite-only playtest with no release date (Release Date and Playtest). Its history has three phases: a burst to 171,490 right after Valve revealed it in 2024, a long quiet stretch through most of 2025, and a climb with each update since that broke the old record on Sep 29, 2026 and kept rising through October. The chart at the top of the home page is SteamDB's measured data, the peak of each day from May 25, 2024 and of each hour for the last month.

Quick facts

All-time peak	303,347 on Oct 16, 2026 (Violet's release)
24-hour peak, Oct 26, 2026	267,268, 9th on Steam
Players at 12:33 UTC, Oct 26, 2026	115,693
2024 peak	171,490 on Sep 2, 2024
Lowest day since the reveal	11,672 on Aug 14, 2025
Passed Team Fortress 2's record	Oct 9, 2026 (262,145 against TF2's 253,997)
First day on SteamDB's chart	May 25, 2024 (710 players)

Sources: SteamDB, read Oct 26, 2026; Steam's concurrent players chart, read Oct 26, 2026; PC Gamer, Oct 10, 2026.

How many people play Deadlock now

On Oct 26, 2026 Deadlock was the 9th most played game on Steam, by Steam's own concurrent players chart: 115,693 in game at 12:33 UTC and 267,268 at the day's peak. In SteamDB's hourly data, every day from Oct 9 to Oct 26, 2026 peaked above 198,000 (SteamDB). The count swings widely across a day, from over 260,000 around 20:00 UTC on Oct 25, 2026 to under 90,000 around 09:00 UTC the next morning, in SteamDB's hourly readings.

These are concurrent players, people in the game at one moment. Valve publishes no total of players, accounts or invites, and Steam shows no reviews for the unreleased app, so concurrent counts are the only public measure of Deadlock's size.

The record: 303,347 on Oct 16, 2026

The all-time peak came on Oct 16, 2026, the day Valve released Violet, the fifth of City Never Sleeps' six heroes. Destructoid reported that it made Deadlock Steam's 4th most played game at that moment, "even though the game remains invite-only" (Destructoid, Oct 17, 2026). It is the current record as of Oct 26, 2026; the City Never Sleeps Update page covers the update behind it.

A week earlier Deadlock had passed a Valve milestone. On Oct 9, 2026, when Solomon was released, it reached 262,145 players, above Team Fortress 2's all-time peak of 253,997 (PC Gamer, Oct 10, 2026). PC Gamer noted that TF2's record came about three years earlier and may have been inflated by bots and idle servers. Some reports still call 262,145 the record; it held only until Oct 16.

Every big jump and what caused it

Deadlock's count moves with Valve's updates, and above all with new heroes. This table lists each day the daily peak jumped, from SteamDB's measured data (daily peaks to Sep 25, 2026, then the highest hourly count of each day):

Date	Peak	What happened
May 25, 2024	710	First day on SteamDB's chart, during the closed playtest
Aug 18, 2024	44,512	Leaked playtest spreads before the reveal (PC Gamer)
Aug 24, 2024	64,054	The day after Valve's Aug 23 reveal and Steam page
Sep 2, 2024	171,490	The 2024 peak, a record for two years (Shacknews)
Jan 17, 2025	23,536	Holliday, Vyper, Calico and The Magnificent Sinclair join (Valve)
Feb 26, 2025	19,336	Map Rework: three lanes (Valve)
May 8, 2025	22,687	Shop Rework (Valve)
Aug 18, 2025	28,833	Six New Heroes and the first hero vote (Valve)
Sep 1, 2025	62,443	The days after Victor ended the six-hero rollout on Aug 29
Jan 22, 2026	62,545	Old Gods, New Blood (Valve)
Jan 26, 2026	98,887	Rem released (Valve)
Feb 9, 2026	125,665	Celeste released, the high of the Old Gods, New Blood rollout (Valve)
Jul 30, 2026	93,961	Matchmaking Update and Ranked Season 1 (Valve)
Sep 29, 2026	228,086	City Never Sleeps, a new record over 171,490 (Dot Esports)
Oct 2, 2026	228,208	Rat King released (Valve)
Oct 6, 2026	236,730	Baba released (Valve)
Oct 9, 2026	262,145	Solomon released; past Team Fortress 2's record (PC Gamer)
Oct 13, 2026	275,452	Deadman Danny released (Valve)
Oct 16, 2026	303,347	Violet released; the all-time peak (Destructoid)
Oct 20, 2026	277,065	Nurse Harrow released, the last of the six (Valve)

Source for every peak: SteamDB, read Oct 26, 2026.

2024: from closed playtest to 171,490

Before the reveal Deadlock was a secret playtest, yet it grew fast. Game World Observer counted 16,947 concurrent players on Aug 12, 2024, near Steam's top 100, and by Aug 18 the daily peak was 44,512. Valve's reveal on Aug 23, 2024 lifted the gag rule and turned invites into a menu button, and the count kept climbing for ten days: 89,203 on Aug 25, 106,447 on Aug 29, and 171,490 on Sep 2, 2024, at around 12pm PT on the Labor Day holiday (Shacknews, Sep 3, 2024).

The count then fell steadily. Daily peaks dropped below 100,000 in October, below 40,000 in December, and to 14,419 on Dec 31, 2024 (SteamDB).

2025: the quiet year

From January to mid-August 2025 Deadlock drew between about 11,700 and 23,500 players at its daily peak. PCGamesN put it at "around 20,000 concurrent players a day" in January (PCGamesN, Jan 8, 2025), when Valve dropped its two-week patch schedule for larger, slower updates. The Map Rework and the Shop Rework each lifted the count for a few days, and the lowest day since the reveal came on Aug 14, 2025, at 11,672 (SteamDB).

Six New Heroes turned the year around. From Aug 18, 2025 a new hero arrived every other day by player vote, and 24-hour peaks stayed above 50,000 for five days in a row (Esports.gg, Aug 29, 2025). The monthly peak was 60,717 in Aug 2025 against 15,763 in July (Dexerto, Jan 28, 2026). The count eased back to a December high of 29,153.

2026: each update higher

Old Gods, New Blood more than doubled the count on Jan 22, 2026, and each of its heroes pushed it higher: 98,887 on Rem's day (Jan 26), 100,558 on Graves' (Jan 29) and 125,665 on Celeste's (Feb 9), the high of the spring. Unlike in 2025, players stayed: daily peaks did not fall below 54,000 at any point from February to September 2026 (SteamDB). PCGamesN described "regular daily highs of 75,000 players" in August (PCGamesN, Aug 9, 2026), and GamingOnLinux wrote that Deadlock "was regularly hitting 80,000 players" before City Never Sleeps (GamingOnLinux, Oct 1, 2026).

0:01 City Never Sleeps then tripled it. On Sep 29, 2026 the daily peak went from 74,915 the day before to 228,086, breaking the two-year-old record, and the six hero releases between Oct 2 and Oct 20, two a week, each set or neared a new high. Even on days without a release, the count stayed above 198,000 at its peak through Oct 26, 2026.

About these numbers

The numbers on this page and in the home page chart are SteamDB's measured concurrent players, read from its chart on Oct 26, 2026: the peak of each UTC day from May 25, 2024 to Sep 25, 2026, then a reading each hour. A day's peak from the hourly readings can sit slightly below the true peak between readings. Steam's own figures (rank, players now and 24-hour peak) come from its concurrent players chart. We never use estimates of owners or sales, which neither Valve nor SteamDB measures for Deadlock.

Frequently asked questions

How many people play Deadlock? On Oct 26, 2026 Deadlock had 115,693 players in game at 12:33 UTC and a 24-hour peak of 267,268, 9th on Steam (Steam).

What is Deadlock's peak player count? Deadlock's all-time peak is 303,347 concurrent players on Oct 16, 2026, the day Violet was released (SteamDB).

Did Deadlock pass Team Fortress 2? Yes. Deadlock reached 262,145 players on Oct 9, 2026, above Team Fortress 2's all-time peak of 253,997 (PC Gamer, Oct 10, 2026).

Is Deadlock dying? No: Deadlock's player count is near its all-time high, with every daily peak from Oct 9 to Oct 26, 2026 above 198,000 (SteamDB). It did fall to 11,672 at its 2025 low before updates brought players back.

Why did Deadlock's player count drop in 2025? Deadlock's count fell from 171,490 in Sep 2024 to 14,419 on Dec 31, 2024 and stayed low while Valve moved to fewer, larger updates in 2025; it recovered with Six New Heroes in Aug 2025 (SteamDB; PCGamesN).

Where can I see Deadlock's Steam charts? Deadlock's measured player chart is on SteamDB, and the same data is charted at the top of this viki's home page.