r/DeadlockTheGame • u/Axis251 • Feb 24 '26
Discussion A tweet that has me thinking.
I don’t know if Riot can copy what valve has created with Deadlock. The atmosphere and setting so what I think makes deadlock so enjoyable. Yes the gameplay is amazing and the moba aspects are great but I just don’t think riot will even try to copy valve and make a deadlock clone. What is all y’all’s thoughts.
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u/FewExperience3559 Sinclair Feb 24 '26
The team behind the game is then halved and updates stop within a year
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u/Pollenus Feb 24 '26
2weeko
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u/UrsaMajor920 Feb 24 '26
Lol I actually enjoy 2XKO but this is pretty funny.
It's a shame because the core game is quite solid, the handshake tag system is very freeform, allows for a lot of cool combos and nasty setups. But the monetization decisions and low morale from the devs within a month of release is foreboding.
Not sure what went wrong, 10 years of dev time and we don't have much to show for it. Seems like the execs were really expecting it to do LoL/Valorant numbers
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u/just_Okapi Dynamo Feb 24 '26
It was never going to do the numbers they wanted, no matter how good the game was. Simple fact of the matter is, 2D tag fighters are a niche of an already niche genre. Street Fighter 6 is easily the biggest of the current fighting game releases, and it pulls 36k players concurrent on a good day on Steam. The playerbase for competitive fighting games just isn't nearly as big as MOBAs or FPSes.
On top of that, fighting game fans don't tend to whale out over skins and stuff like MOBA and FPS players tend to, for a myriad of reasons that ultimately boil down to "it's not the culture". Giving the FGC a free to play fighting game should have been a nonstarter from the start if their goal was to break into that demographic (it was).
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Feb 24 '26
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u/SlammedOptima Haze Feb 24 '26
Smite also is really mechanically the same game as League. Unless im forgetting some ability. Most of the abilities would work exactly the same on league as they do in smite. Its 3rd person, but for all intents and purposes its still only played in 2 dimensions.
Deadlock actually uses the 3rd dimension and requires the mechanical skill of a 3rd person shooter, which Smite doesnt really. That and I actually feel like I can move in deadlock unlike smite, its just not really contested in the 3rd person MOBA space
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u/olor Feb 25 '26
I only played LoL during Season 1 and when I tried Smite 2 when the beta went public on steam pretty much all the items were LoL items I remember from S1
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u/SlammedOptima Haze Feb 25 '26
It has been a long time since I played League, so I dont remember the items tbh. Honestly builds and items feel a lot more intuitive and easier to learn how to build than smite or league do. On other mobas, I feel like I really gotta just build whatever the meta build says, while on Deadlock I feel like I understand the items much better and can actually build based on the character and what things I need in the moment, But that might also just be a personal issue for me with other MOBAs lol
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u/Knaprig Feb 25 '26
That's just the IceFrog/Valve design philosophy of items, allowing them to have unique and strong enough effects so that itemization is more than just minmaxing numbers.
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u/First-Business-5797 Feb 25 '26
Yeah the only real difference beyond the low camera is that you have to aim your auto attacks. There’s no actual z-axis in smite
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u/HealthyCheesecake643 Feb 24 '26
Deadlock isn't competing with Smite, it has a very different appeal with the greater focus on gunplay and verticality. It's basically only competing with the various Paragon clones going around which is to say it has no competition.
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u/Kage_No_Gnade Feb 25 '26
Its a fighting game.
Its a 2D fighting game.
Its a 2D tag fighting game.
Its a 2D tag fighting game with no single player mode.
Its a 2D tag fighting game with no single player mode, and only with a 12 characters cast NOW (not on launch), with half of the cast being from Arcane instead of any of the other 170-ish champion.
Its niche upon niche upon niche. And even league players that kinda has interest (like me) kinda just has Arcane fatigue and want some other characters.
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u/TudasNicht Feb 25 '26
Don't think anyone cares about the characters that much, but the issue is also how half the champ are locked in the beginning. I downloaded it at a friend's place on Ps5 and we could pick like 6? Champs on local. Like we played 5? Rounds and it was just so boring because I was locked into those few characters in the beginning.
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u/LLJKCicero Feb 24 '26
It could've done better if it was more polished with more characters after a decade of development though.
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Feb 24 '26
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u/shiftup1772 Feb 24 '26
Fans of the game are never gonna understand this, but the game was never going to be more than a typical (niche) fighting game.
Somehow the game with one button combos still felt very awkward and unwelcoming to casual players. And this is coming from someone who loved guilty gear strive.
They failed to achieve the same goal that league, valorant and tft excelled at: taking a genre that is fun but unwelcoming, and creating a game that is fun for casuals without completely sacrificing depth and competitive integrity.
2xko failed at that spectacularly. Tag fighter fans love it, but that's about it.
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u/just_Okapi Dynamo Feb 24 '26 edited Feb 24 '26
What..? If 2XKO was a car, it'd be so well polished you could use the clearcoat as a mirror.
2XKO's problem is NOT in its polish, or balance, or anything that has to do with gameplay (aside from the small roster). The issue is Riot expecting it to do gangbusters just because it's in the LoL setting. Think about it for a moment: if Dragon Ball FighterZ, Marvel vs Capcom Infinite, and BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle all couldn't do gangbusters by being highly polished tag fighters based on internationally recognizable IPs and beloved settings, what hope did 2XKO have?
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u/Navy_Pheonix Feb 24 '26 edited Feb 24 '26
It was in development hell so long they managed to lose a character (Katarina) before release.
Also if I wanted this much Arcane I'd just rewatch Arcane. Lee Sin and Riven should have been base roster, period. The game does not need Caitlyn and Jinx at the same time they literally do nearly identical things.
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u/ForeverKidd Abrams Feb 24 '26
That or it's on a slow and painful death till support is cut and the company focuses on their other sinking MOBA.
I'm not salty about Paladins and Hi-Rez studios at aaaaall!
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u/noahboah Lash Feb 24 '26
hi-rez had this uncanny ability to find an incredibly fun gameplay loop and core game design foundation yet none of the managerial sense to keep the lights on lmao
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u/Sylhux Feb 24 '26
You don't even have to use the past tense, the Hi-Rez curse is still very much alive. After 15 years and running, you'd think they would have learned something, so far, not much has changed.
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u/juanperes93 Pocket Feb 25 '26
The chaos they could create on the character's gameplay work with was so charming sometimes.
No other company would create a character with damage thar only work on far awat targets with a heal for close allies and a mobility that was glitched but they left it as a tech and make it all work as good as Grover did.
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u/noahboah Lash Feb 25 '26
dude exactly. like my sister and I always said something to the effect of overwatch being a respectable, middle-to-higher-end sit down restaurant while paladins was a hole in the wall that made the cheapest, cheesiest, most delicious smash burgers ever. they hit completely different spots but are equally memorable and delicious.
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u/Dracvich Feb 25 '26
Please God let someone leak Paladins' source code so we can actually do something with the IP
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u/beatnikhero Feb 24 '26
I will hate Hi-Rez forever because of Tribes. They murdered it for literally no reason.
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u/Mekhazzio Ivy Feb 24 '26
I mean, Smite generating way more money for way less effort is a pretty good reason, in terms of the business continuing to exist.
But I'm personally never giving Hi-Rez a second chance after Tribes.
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u/Bread_kun Feb 25 '26
The thing is they didn't even have to touch ascend. They just gutted it in a single patch, pissed literally everyone off and made them quit and moved on.
I get they wanted to focus on smite, they didn't need to take Ascend out back and blow its brains out.
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u/Yentz4 Feb 24 '26
Kids these days. Before Tribes, I hated Hi-Rez for killing off Global Agenda!
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u/UltraJake Deadman Danny Feb 24 '26 edited Feb 24 '26
I was pissed for the same reason but was willing to forgive them because of how fun Ascend was. Then they did it again!
I heard Paladins is (was?) good as well but I wasn't about to fall for the same trick 3 times. No clue what was going on with Smite except for coming across this video years ago.
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u/PacifistTheHypocrite Feb 24 '26
Paladins was such a fun game, i remember playing in the beta when they had the OG siege mode where you pushed the cart to towers and walls and shit to siege the enemy spawn, damn shame they got rid of it. I played bomb king and dps pip
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u/_NotMitetechno_ Feb 24 '26
I don't think riot would make a deadlock clone unless they could massively simplify it and garuntee profit - even then I don't think it would happen. I think rn valve is probably the only studio on earth that could make deadlock, not in terms of actual ability but purely in the sense that deadlock is an insanely risky game and valve has humungous runaway with steam that enables it to take huge risks - not to mention having lower staff numbers than most.
Deadlock has a horrific barrier to entry in terms of onboarding new players and hero shooters are oversaturated and highly competitive - both of these kind of combine to an very risky product (add to f2p as well - you'd struggle to make money out of the gate).
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u/shierrak Feb 25 '26
people on this subreddit overrate how hard this game is.. Ive never touched a moba in my life and getting into this game wasn't that hard at all
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u/Hunkyy Feb 25 '26
But redditors also has this weird idea in their head where all new players have seemingly never even touched a computer in their lives so the game must be completely impossible to play for them.
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u/Dick_Pain Feb 25 '26
I think people confuse skill ceiling with barrier of entry.
lol, Dota 2, and Deadlock have low barriers of entry. I would argue that Dota 2 and Deadlock have more so of it.
Skill ceiling, is a different beast. Like I love mobas (Dota 2 and HoTS mostly) and can wrap around the itemization and farming patterns. But mobility I struggle with.
I feel like deadlock is in a sweet spot for casual enjoyers of hero shooters that want more complexity than rivals or overwatch.
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u/lightfalcon11620 Feb 25 '26
How in the world does lol and dota have a low barrier of entry?
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u/yinyang107 McGinnis Feb 25 '26
lol, Dota 2, and Deadlock have low barriers of entry.
Absolutely not. The burden of knowledge is immense, never mind the mechanical skill.
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u/IVDAMKE_ Feb 24 '26
Yep, considering how many other games Riot spins up then shuts down because theyve not met expectations id be surprised if they tried to tackle a deadlock style game.
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u/_NotMitetechno_ Feb 25 '26
Not saying riot is well ran behind the scenes, but that's kind of the point we're at with the industry right now. Most investor capital has dried up because of the economy, the market recorrecting and a lot of well invested games/studios flopping. So unless a game can make money straight away everyone just cuts their losses, the live service market is really difficult because everything is competing for the same attention.
Epic are probably in a similarish position because of their engine but I don't think they're interested in this style of game either. Just too risky for a company to produce unless it's basically a passion project with limitless funds (or very small in scale).
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u/koomerz Shiv Feb 25 '26
Epic aims to maintain their position by playing it safe because investors run things to an extent, valve doesn't have that issue at all
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u/Jealous-Finance Feb 25 '26
When Epic release their annual financial report in the past, it showed that, Fortnite actually made 90% of Epic's revenue. Their engine revenue was tiny compare to it.
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u/PM_ME_DRAGON_GlRLS Vindicta Feb 25 '26
ive had friends bounce off deadlock despite being moba/movement shooter players because its learning curve is just THAT steep and it has so much going on
although usually for those cases it really doesn't help when they try to queue up for their first match and immediately get shitstomped in lane and can't do anything for the rest of the match because it's their first game and the game doesn't have a real onboarding process
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u/thecomicguybook Violet Feb 24 '26
Not Riot specifically, this tweet is just a jab at Valorant. But there will come another multiplayer game that takes inspiration from Deadlock and there will be a whole discourse about it sold to you by people who do not care to get you to click on a youtube video.
I think that if Deadlock does anything for the gaming scene at large I really hope it is to make other games get their heads out of the sand and implement fun movement mechanics that are more complex.
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u/GertrudeDelilah Feb 24 '26
After grinding Deadlock I am now irrationally disappointed whenever I play a game that doesn't have a wall jump mechanic. Even the last cod has it, but I think casual players might be turned off that sort of mobility.
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u/Diplomatic_Sarcasm Feb 24 '26
Titanfall, I still miss you
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u/L0rdenglish Feb 24 '26
imagine when they add a character that can wallrun to this game. then I will be set
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u/Pub-Fries Feb 24 '26
It's still there, you can still play it
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u/Diplomatic_Sarcasm Feb 24 '26
I can almost hear its voice
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u/ForwardToNowhere Graves Feb 24 '26
Check out Diesel Knights on Steam, it's still early in development but a lot of passion is going into it and there's a demo available
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u/Dyne4R Feb 24 '26
For me, it's the irrational instinct to crouch on stairs to go down them faster. I caught myself trying to crouch down a flight of stairs in FFXIV this week. There isn't even a crouch button in that game.
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u/__cinnamon__ Vindicta Feb 24 '26
Fr I wanna slide down everything now. I don't expect every game to have wall jumps but velocity-based sliding just feels natural.
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u/DeMayon Feb 24 '26
I think the low time to kill in fps shooters makes the movement feel bad, mostly because skill issue (I die before I can turn around) whereas deadlock has a much longer TTK
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u/Multivitamin_Scam Feb 24 '26
The escapes are an absolutely thrilling part of Deadlock and its a part of the game that you really appreciate the development time that went into building and testing those movement mechanics.
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u/behv Feb 24 '26
I fucking love going "shit guys I'm in trouble" and then saying "nevermind I'm okay" after linking a dash jump into wall jump into another jump to slide down stairs and FINALLY dash one more time behind my tower or walker while 3 guys are running at me. Even better when people react and we punish the over chase
Makes rivals feel like playing solitaire when all of the abilities don't interact with any terrain and it's just "can I replicate the same button press sequences to play this hero". Glad it exists for the genre but it just doesn't hit the same
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u/timmytissue Feb 24 '26
It sinteresting that wall jump seems so essential now. I played before it was added and when it got added I thought it wouldn't be that useful lol
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u/Supershadow30 Abrams Feb 24 '26
Same but with sliding… everytime i play drg I wish i could slide down slopes, instead my stupid dwarf pulls out the laser pointer 😔
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u/Chon-C Feb 24 '26
I mostly play Lucio so wall jumps are kinda there. But I still catch myself trying to crouch slide down stairs an slopes.
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u/PiEispie Feb 24 '26
Honestly with the futuristic cod games, apex legends and the growing indie "boomer shooter" genre havent expanded movement systems in more games I dont have high hopes.
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u/tzler Feb 24 '26
I love the movement in Deadlock but I don't think every shooter has to be a movement shooter. CS, for example, places extreme importance on positioning. I actually do appreciate that Overwatch is kind of the same as well. You have to think a bit before you move. The way Deadlock is pushing movement shooters is great but there's plenty of room for other design philosophies.
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u/1kingdomheart Mina Feb 24 '26
I don't think anybody disagrees with this in theory, it's just the reality of it is most games that have released in the past 10 years or so have pretty basic movement in an effort to appeal to more people. There's literally nothing on the market right now like Deadlock, both in art and movement.
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u/tzler Feb 24 '26
Yeah not quite to the extent of Deadlock but games like Apex and Destiny have some pretty shifty movement too. I think Apex actually comes pretty close to giving DL a run for it's money movement-wise. Conservation of momentum, wall jumping, and some other more obscure movement techs.
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u/Yarr0w Feb 24 '26 edited Feb 24 '26
Not just a jab at Valorant. Riot’s entire identity has been and always will be rip offs. League ripped Dota. Legends of Runetera ripped Hearthstone. Valorant ripped Counter Strike. Riot isn’t in the business of original IPs, and never has been.
EDIT: Already triggered Riot fan boys lol
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_PIZZAPIC Drifter Feb 24 '26
dont forget how they ripped autochess/underlords
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u/timmytissue Feb 24 '26
Wouldn't call it an underlorss rip but definitely autochess
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u/noahboah Lash Feb 24 '26
yup autochess 100%
underlords was pretty tangential to tft, and then valve hit the valve special and let tft just win out. i was so pissed.
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u/New-Independent-1481 Feb 24 '26 edited Feb 25 '26
Valve flew over the entire Autochess team from China and had a lengthy negotiation, but ultimately it failed. AFAIK there's no publically stated reason why, but considering it became an Epic Exclusive shortly after we can assume Tim Sweeney flashed a fat bag of cash that Valve did not want to match.
Valve tried to catch the hype with Underlords, but honestly it was really clear that the devs just weren't that into it. They didn't have a clear vision for what they want the game to be, and it didn't have the spark of brilliance that even early alpha Deadlock had.
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u/pterodactyl_speller Feb 25 '26
I really liked Underlords initially but whoever they left managing it really fucked everything up.
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u/CharlieBluey Feb 24 '26
You missed arguably the most obvious example of Teamfight Tactics, which explicitly was Riot trying to rush a product to market as fast as possible to copy Dota Autochess. I mean fair play I guess because it was a mod, but I mean yeah anybody who pretends that Riot's successes are based on original ideas is not even worth engaging with
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u/FundamentalAttribute Feb 24 '26
I don't think I've ever seen anyone say that riots success are their original ideas. Their success is from innovating a proved product in time to cash in on a market and to keep pumping out updates until it doesn't work. Rip lor
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u/WRLD_ Feb 25 '26
the entire company was literally founded on seeing dota 1 and thinking "we can monetize the shit out of this forever"
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u/Gilthwixt Feb 24 '26
It's kind of funny to read a comment like this and not see one reply mentioning The Finals. It's class specific but the movement in that game can be absolutely bonkers and yet the game struggles to retain new players because of how chaotic and mechanically confusing it can be. Which is a shame, because it absolutely kicks ass.
Deadlock has a lot of other stuff going for it, to say nothing of a dedicated Valve fan base, so it's hard to say where exactly the discrepancy lies. But I'm of the opinion that casual audiences actually don't care for deeply complex movement mechanics and Deadlock is simply special in other ways to keep retention high, so we're not likely to see a ton of other games copying just the movement (or at least, not thriving in the same way).
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u/akhamis98 Lash Feb 24 '26
The finals has people moving vertically and fast but i wouldn't say it's anywhere near as complex as a deadlock/apex/quake. I love the finals but i don't really get the same movement itch out of it.
Agreed on ur other points tho, i think deadlock has nailed not only the movement but also the aesthetic, writing, characters, etc that draws in casual players as well
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u/CityAdventurous5781 Rem Feb 25 '26
I'm pretty sure this is a reference to Team Fight Tactics, which is a clone of Dota Autochess (technically Dota Underlords). It was a Dota 2 mod that literally invented the autochess genre as we know it today, and it was doing so well that it was beating League entirely on Twitch.
Valve was like "Dota began as a mod of a different game and look at it now. We're gonna pass on the torch by giving the Autochess mod maker the funding to expand his game into an IP, and even make a standalone version of it on Steam that he will receive profit for"
And then Riot saw that shit and was like "Oh fuck, quick, make a carbon copy and cram it full of predatory monetisation and addictive imagery we literally learned from Casinos" and now Dota autochess is dead.
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u/Secretlylovesslugs Feb 24 '26
Deadlock is the kind of game that could only be made by a studo like valve. The fact that the game is free to play with 0 monetization yet and has been running stable like this for so long is incredible.
If the payment is testing out the Alpha jank I'm totally fine with it.
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u/timmytissue Feb 24 '26
It's wild how the discourse of league vs Dota do rarely mentions that Dota lets you play all the heroes for free. Riot has always had some of the most terrible free to play monetization of any company. Maybe only surpassed by Blizzard with hearthstone.
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u/cool_slowbro Feb 24 '26
Riot players actually think it's normal to have most characters locked out in your competitive multiplayer game.
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u/_Valisk Feb 24 '26
I saw someone practically begging for Deadlock to add something similar because it gives them a sense of progression and forces them to practice a handful of heroes.
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u/drododruffin Rem Feb 25 '26
If people want that, they could instead ask for hero mastery to be added, like Blizzard had in Heroes of the Storm and eventually added to Overwatch.
Never liked that some of the characters were locked in a competitive game like this or other MOBAs, I want a fair and even playing field.
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u/LeftHandOfArcann Feb 25 '26
Is took it as a jab at league and valorant. Since dota 1 and cs were before valorant and lol.
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u/Dumbass_bi_frog Feb 24 '26
This is just TF2 vs Overwatch again
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u/QuantityHappy4459 Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26
Or TF2 vs Fortnite.
Or TF2 vs Rivals
Or TF2 vs Deadlock
TF2 fans are a strange bunch.
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u/8Lith8 Seven Feb 24 '26
You think they can‘t but they will find a way, Riot would never skip out on copying a popular Game.
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u/ClericDo Feb 24 '26
If Icefrog is working on it, riot is working on a shitty clone of it
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Feb 24 '26
Who is Icefrog?
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u/Warp_spark Billy Feb 24 '26
Dota and Deadlock developer, Yoshi being him is the worst kept secret
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u/ChosenUndead15 Feb 24 '26
Really? I thought he will keep being a ghost in the west forever and ever.
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u/TheMad_fox Mina Feb 24 '26
The creator of DotA and he is called Yoshi in DL
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u/PandAlex Feb 24 '26
Technically didn’t create Dota but he’s the one who made it to what it is today.
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u/Jakota_ Feb 24 '26
Yeah he was the new guy on the og Dota mod team, the only one (out of like 3 guys) that didn’t leave to make league. Dota 2 is entirely ice frog, but it was built off the back of the original mod. Deadlock is 100% ice frog from the beginning.
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u/VogonWild Feb 24 '26
Eul just got out of dev all together didn't he?
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u/fiasgoat Feb 24 '26
Well he was I think hired back at Valve at some capacity at one point. Don't know if he is still there
They showed him in the crowd at TI once a long time ago
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u/RoyAwesome Feb 24 '26
Eul worked at valve (or still does?) on Dota 2.
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u/keaganwill Vyper Feb 25 '26
Think he still does, or is just on good terms. IIRC scythe of vyse used to have a different name in reference to a dev, but they left and it got renamed a while after. Though that could have been a dota 1 holdover? I recall one item was named after guinsoo
Euls Scepter being the same name makes me assume hes still there.
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u/RoyAwesome Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26
The thing about "Guinsoo's Scythe of Vyse" is that very few people actually called it that. It was called Scythe or Sheepstick in dota 1 by the community, names that carried over to dota 2, including "sheepstick" becoming voiced lines in the game. But yes, they did remove 'Guinsoo's' from the name. I believe the name "sheep"/"sheepstick" stuck so much that you can search "sheep" in the shop and get scythe.
Eul's Scepter of Divinity was called "Euls" by the community because it was the shortest word to identify it. Valve changing it would have forced the whole community to relearn the name of the item which they tended not to do in the early days of dota 2. Thus it stuck around.
I'd imagine if people actually called scythe "guinsoo's" or something, Valve would have figured out how to make that work. It was convenient that the community did not call it that at all, so they just dropped that part of the item's name.
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u/MattDaCatt Calico Feb 25 '26
He's the balance god. DotA was an unbalanced mess for a while (which was the way of Wc3, you just had to be there w/ Angel Arena)
DotA was already popular, but he's the one the made it worth actually learning
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u/DotA627b Mo & Krill Feb 25 '26
DotA-Allstars was the spinoff he worked on, which was a product of combining all the good hero ideas from other DotA variants under one banner. Riot never had the claim for DotA since the guy they stole had nothing to do with DotA's development, he just paid for the server cost of the DotA-Allstars forums.
The game was genuinely stupid until he stepped in and stability finally set in 6.00. 6.27b is still peak, hence my handle.
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u/DNihilus Feb 24 '26
He is not. He is one of the people who start to updating it and no unlike other comments saying he created "Dota All-Stars", it was before him. Before Icefrog there was Guinsoo. Guinsoo went to make LoL and Icefrog went to Valve. And Icefrog's version was the most popular one at the time.
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u/Alternative-Deer-144 Feb 25 '26
and before guinsoo there was eul!
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u/Jealous-Finance Feb 25 '26
And Eul works at Valve
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u/DotA627b Mo & Krill Feb 25 '26
Yep, Eul was higher on that hierarchy. They also acquired Pendragon first, then worked on getting Guinsoo when they realized Pendragon had NOTHING to do with DotA's actual development.
That said, Icefrog did retaliate, hence why the Scythe of Vyse doesn't have Guinsoo's name anymore while the Scepter of Divinity is still attributed to Eul.
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u/The_Last_Thursday Feb 25 '26
Is Yoshi confirmed as Icefrog? I thought that was unclear.
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u/klementineQt Feb 24 '26
at one point maintainer of the original Dota (the mod for Warcraft 3), now works at Valve, instrumental in creating Dota 2 and now Deadlock
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u/LittleFreedom98 Feb 24 '26
Ever since I first checked out Dota 2 about 2 years ago, it somehow never crossed my mind that Icefrog is a nickname of a person, I always thought they were a small dev studio that part of Valve and focuses on their mobas, not a single guy
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u/LLJKCicero Feb 24 '26
Creator of Dota as we know it.
Originally there were different variants of Defense of the Ancients. Icefrog's was "DotA All-Stars".
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Feb 24 '26
Success is important though. Since League, all of their games except Valorant have been COLOSSAL flops. And I genuinely think Valorant only got as lucky as it did because it came out during the peak of the pandemic, but that's just my personal hot take on it.
They have a whole ass MMO they're working on and yeah all those recent games are just absolutely worthless, I don't think Riot are gonna be risk-taking on any other game development any time soon.
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u/Ok_Acanthisitta_6688 Feb 24 '26
Haven’t played it but i’m pretty sure tft is quite popular
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u/TheOutWriter Feb 25 '26
quite popular... its is THE autochess game there is. nothing comes even close to it. riot cant do a lot of things, but when they copy and are able to improve on something that someone else has done, they nail it. LoR wasnt copied, 2XKO wasnt copied, Valorant was copied and is doing well for them. And of course league itself.
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u/ZeloAvarosa Paradox Feb 25 '26
I'm pissed about LoR doing so poorly since it really was a neat way of playing card games. I remember back when it was released that it took much of what I liked about MTG and meshed it into a modernised system that was its own thing, but the advertising for the game was awful and it ended up getting its budgets cut until now they barely have enough budget to focus on the PVE side of things.
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u/baterrr88 Feb 24 '26
Tft is pretty fire
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Feb 24 '26
I did forget about TFT tbh mainly because it's been smacked into the League client as a sort of 'side gamemode' to League. I have no idea if it has its own standalone client now.
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u/True_Square_9542 Feb 24 '26
2xko, while not particularly appealing to general audiences, will likely be relevant in the FGC for at least a few years.
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u/iHackPlsBan Billy Feb 24 '26
I think Valorant also works because the only competitor was CS, a game known for how incredibly unwelcoming and toxic it is, along with being hard to get into and at the time being a game that was like a decade old or something. When faced with these issues and someone else offers you a game with the same kind of mechanics, quirky characters, abilities that do most of the work for you, super flashy skins that have a round price and not a price of 300 euros just to get a good looking one. And most of all a playerbase where nobody had played it at that point. You’re bound to suck players in.
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u/Zenith_Tempest Mina Feb 24 '26
People underestimate how "bland thing given fresh art direction" pretty much slaps you at the forefront of a trend. Valorant worked off CSGO, and Fortnite pretty much became an overnight sensation because Epic just ripped PUBG off but used their own existing assets.
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u/PogChampHS Feb 24 '26
For the pubg example, its also crazy how terribly optimized that game was on launch, whereas fortnite could run perfectly well on my laptop at the time.
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u/BakerUsed5384 Feb 24 '26 edited Feb 24 '26
Valorant got as lucky as it did because it came out during the peak of the pandemic
Nah. I don’t buy this. If a game doesn’t have staying power, it doesn’t matter when it releases or how many people play it at it’s peak, they’ll leave, and that just simply hasn’t happened with Valorant.
Highguard had 100k concurrent for a few days and now can barely pull more than 1k on weekends, because it doesn’t do anything to grip people and keep them coming back.
Battlefield 6 was the highest selling game of the year last year, by far, and has since lost like 90% of it’s playerbase, in a matter of months.
Warzone peaked at the exact same time as Valorant and while it’s fall from grace has been far more gradual, it eventually fell off a cliff player base wise in a way Valorant hasn’t.
I can list plenty of other games that released during the Pandemic, experienced huge numbers, and then died soon after. You can’t just attribute Valorant’s staying power to luck and timing, even if you don’t like the game, you have to admit at a certain point that there is something there that millions of players enjoy about the game to keep them playing or coming back.
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u/BSchafer Mina Feb 24 '26
What are you talking about? Both TFT and Wild Rift are still doing very well with 33 million and 4 million MAU’s respectively. Riot’s only released 6 video games. Only 2 of those were large budget “mainstream” games - both of which are maintain some of the highest player counts and revenue in gaming despite releasing 5-10 years ago. The other 4 games are relatively low budget games that target very niche playerbases. Yet 1 of those 4, TFT, is up there with League and Valorant as one most successful games ever. Wild Rift was doing huge number for awhile and continues to do very well. By all accounts, Legends of Runeterra, was an incredible game it just targeted smaller player base and wasn’t worth the constant updates/resources that the bigger games get. The only Riot game that could even come close to being considered “a colossal failure” is probably 2KXO but it’s probably even too soon to even say that. Not my type of game but most people’s largest complaint is there is enough fighter yet so it could still end up doing ok. Also, Valorant Mobile’s beta released a few months back in China and already has 50 million MAU’s and made over $1 million its first day alone. So that will likely be another huge hit for them on release. Very few developers have had such a high success rate as Riot and been able to hold on to their huge number like Riot has been able to do on 4 of the 6 games they’ve released.
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u/patriotfanatic80 Feb 24 '26
We already have lol and dota 2. Neither community really cares about the other.
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u/thedotapaten Grey Talon Feb 25 '26
DOTA2 community care, hence the community always boast about the prizepool. Now that Valve no longer do BattlePass probably due to Digital Fairness Act coming soon the DOTA2 community shift their hatred toward DeadLock as the reason the game being abandonware and falling down despite the esports viewership increased by 10% last season and DOTA2 player number last 6 months above 500k (last time this happens was late 2015 and early 2018)
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u/UberActivist Feb 24 '26
And the Riot Deadlock Clone will have rectal verification to prevent cheating.
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u/Coolman_Rosso Feb 24 '26
Are Riot/Blizz/Valve still in the weird 3-way joust they've been in the last 10-15 years? I feel like the whole thing kind of died down after the auto-battler fad died out and Artifact flopped.
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u/Warp_spark Billy Feb 24 '26
I mean, Valve never removed the "Thank you, Blizzard" from Dota's credits so who knows.
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u/11711510111411009710 Feb 24 '26
Is valve in competition with anyone? I mean they kind of occupy their own space in the gaming industry. The closest is epic but it's not much of a competition.
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u/Coolman_Rosso Feb 24 '26
I'm referring to how Blizz and Valve got into it over the DOTA naming rights, which Valve eventually won, and how Blizz was then behind in getting their own MOBA out the door (HotS would release 3 years after DOTA 2 and 6 years after League). Though they had success with Hearthstone, and afterwards Riot tried their own card game with LoR while Valve did Artifact. Then there's Valorant being pretty on the nose combining Overwatch style heroes with Counter-Strike's gameplay
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u/11711510111411009710 Feb 24 '26
Oh I had no idea that was a thing that happened lol, learn something new every day
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u/vixiara Feb 24 '26
Definitely not as competitive between them anymore, but I think they're still the biggest three in the West.
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u/yesat Feb 24 '26
What is also weird is how they have each their own split in the Asian Market.
China has the 3, Korea and Japan have Blizzard and Riot, South East Asia is big on Valve (via Dota).
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u/Dracvich Feb 25 '26
"Hey, Riot Games give me a Deadlock clone."
"And hold the artstyle's sauce."
"And hold the unique gameplay design."
"And hold the in-depth movement system."
"And hold the verticality."
"And hold the personal player freedom."
HEY JIMMY, GIMME A DEADLOCK WITH NUTHIN'
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u/PiEispie Feb 24 '26
Smite chained to the bottom of the ocean of this discourse swimming above it.
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u/HMS_Sunlight Feb 24 '26
The funniest thing was when Smite added a Deadlock-esque short hop and it completely split the fanbase. It was the most fun thing they've ever added or ruined the core gameplay experience and was worth uninstalling over depending on who you asked.
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u/LLJKCicero Feb 24 '26
You still see people saying "Deadlock is a 3D moba, like Smite" and I just wanna shake 'em.
Just because Smite has an over the shoulder perspective doesn't mean they actually changed the gameplay!
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u/Hot-Store-7358 Feb 25 '26
Smite was cool for it's time but at best it was a camera change with horrible management and a garbage ceo that killed the company fearing a upcoming steam game cough... And made a smite 2 and laid off 70% of the company then deleted his Twitter and resigned, Smite was never gonna be a big MOBA no idea why that CEO feared deadlock and why in the world they thought smite 2 would compete with valve lmao, talking coughing baby moba to the MOBA grandaddy ice frog himself, it's not even close.
I loved smite when I played it mainly due to the casual mirror meme matches and shit, but now waiting 3 years for the same gods to come back is just boring.
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u/Heavy-Type-2379 Feb 24 '26
count in what used to be paragon taken over community fuck epic now Predecessor
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u/Pontiflakes Feb 25 '26
It's funny because Hi-Rez used to be the one getting memed on for ripping off games.
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u/Night-O-Shite Feb 25 '26
It's funny yet sad too cuz Paladins started development before overwatch they just released slightly after and got called a copy which is sad cuz Paladins imo had more fun gameplay , characters and asthetics
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u/CDR57 Feb 25 '26
We could’ve had deadlock vs battleborn but gearbox fucking sucks
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u/SK_Ren Feb 25 '26
Preach. The success Deadlock is showing atm only makes me wonder what we missed with Battleborn
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u/CDR57 Feb 25 '26
Battleborn was unironically a very fun game to play, plagued by a team that tried way too hard to be funny (but landed on quite a few good moments) and a team that refused to give it the space it needed. Also, choosing to delay to within 2 weeks of Overwatch release was a choice
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u/SkyTooFly30 Feb 24 '26
i dont think they care to compete with deadlock, League is doing well and is very different when compared to deadlock to where itll exist with no issue.
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u/LucidProtean Feb 24 '26 edited Feb 24 '26
I wouldn't put it past Riot, but the idea of them making a competitor to their own flagship title by creating a Hero Shooter-MOBA is ridiculous and hilarious
EDIT: Forgot about DOTA, so that kinda takes the wind out of my argument. And I don't see Deadlock as much of a CS/TF2 rival as it is a LOL/DOTA rival. Coming from an Overwatch background, I feel like I'm playing more of a MOBA than a Shooter IMO
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u/xXx_edgykid_xXx Feb 24 '26
Isn't that literally what valve did with either TF2 or Dota 2 lmfao
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u/CommunistMountain Feb 25 '26
I don't see Deadlock as a direct competition for TF2 and Dota 2.
TF2 is very different, it's for casual gaming. Not to say that TF2 can't be competitive, but compared to Deadlock and Dota 2, you can hop right into the middle of a match, and even though there's no skill-based matchmaking, matches are 12v12 so you can be a total noob and no one except the sweatiest tryhards will flame you, your low skill won't really make a dent, you're literally 1/12 of the team (and the enemy team also probably has noobs so it evens out)
Dota 2 is more similar but still quite different because there's less focus on aim or movement. I'm a Dota 2 player and made a comment before about not playing because I can't aim, and lots of replies mention the characters that don't need aim, but the point is it's still hard for Dota players who are used to just right-clicking enemies. Also the movement in Deadlock is WASD with dashes, slides, jumps, etc, a lot more buttons than in Dota 2 where you just right click the ground. And you can't look behind you in Deadlock, while you have 360 vision in Dota 2, it's very different when running from enemies
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u/real_roal Feb 24 '26
I mean... which flag ship? Valorant or LOL? And isnt valve doing that with CS or DOTA? It would be being your own competition, but valve is doing that to themself, so if riot somehow successfully made a better deadlock (doubtful) they wouldnt lose much.
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u/troglodyte Dynamo Feb 24 '26
How is it different from what Valve is doing? I guess I don't understand why it's ridiculous for Riot to build a moba shooter to compete with Valorant and LoL, but it makes sense (and is working) when Valve makes a moba shooter to compete with CS2 and Dota 2.
Is the point you're making that it's a foolish decision, or that there's something inherent to Riot that makes the idea laughable?
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u/Relative-Scholar-147 Feb 24 '26
but it makes sense (and is working) when Valve makes...
Valve is a unique company that does things in ways other companies can't. Is a 300 people company that makes billions.
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u/X_Luci Mina Feb 24 '26
If the game is successful enough Riot will 100% create a Deadlock clone, just look at EVERY SINGLE game Riots owns, it's all copies from other successful games with their IP on it, they don't have a single original game.
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u/KxPbmjLI Feb 25 '26
They already decided it was successful and innovative enough back when the original beta was popping off, it was leaked or announced back when the original beta was popping off that they're working on their own version.
They even went as far as to tell all the streamers they got power over to NOT mention deadlock in any way on their streams cause they're so insecure and intimidated by the competition
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u/TGB_Skeletor Feb 24 '26
overwatch is the reason why marvel rivals is a thing
marvel rivals is the reason why overwatch had to completly drop the "2" and go back to its roots
it's a win-win situation
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u/Rodruby Mo & Krill Feb 24 '26
If we're talking atmosphere, after Arcane I'm down for some Piltover fights. Like, if they really do Runeterra Deadlock I'll at least try that out
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u/Vatiar Feb 24 '26
Ah I see you're new to Valve games subreddits my friend. See what you're supposed to do is shit on Riot games and call all of their games terrible, even if the thread is in no way possible related to Riote Games or any of their intellectual property.
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u/Velstrom Apollo Feb 24 '26
Extremely funny the difference between riot fans (couldn't give two shits about any "rivalry") vs valve fans (absolute seething hatred towards riot and anybody who even suggests they had fun playing a riot game)
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u/Warp_spark Billy Feb 24 '26
Its a community meme (in greek meaning), Dota community has a much longer player retention cycle, most LoL players nowadays dont know anything about the history of two games, thats if they know what dota is.
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u/lumpfish202 Feb 24 '26
Riot spent the majority of the late 2000s and early 2010s backstabbing Valve and Icefrog over Dota. No surprise Valve fans fucking hate them.
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u/CrocoBull Rat King Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26
This applies to a lot more than just Riot with the Valve glazers tbh. I still remember the TF2/Overwatch wars of yester year, and while there was some mudslinging from both sides the Valve glazers were definitely the more zealous in that equation
I don't know what it is with Valve and attracting the sweatest, most loyal corporate defenders tbh.
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u/Nie_nemozes Feb 25 '26
And it's seen in all three games, CS players can't stop talking about Valorant, Dota players can't stop making fun of LoL (although this is less prevalent nowadays), and TF2 players laughing at Overwatch being dead while not receiving a major update for 8 years
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u/ferocity_mule366 Feb 24 '26
remind me of some TF2 players whose Overwatch lives rent free in their head
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u/Mr_Times Victor Feb 24 '26
It’s the Don Draper elevator meme. League players literally never even think about Dota, and Dota players seethe at the thought of even being compared.
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Feb 24 '26
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Feb 24 '26
I really do think 2XKO would've had more success if they put genuine iconic League characters into the roster instead of trying to appeal to the Arcane crowd. Like yeah Senna and Akali are coming, but A, a bit too late I think, and B, who the fuck asked for Senna? Where is Lee Sin, Sett, Zed?
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u/Another-Mans-Rubarb Feb 25 '26
The game has yasuo teemo and ahri in it, what you want are champions that you feel are iconic, not the champions that most people actually like. The roster is like 80% of the most popular champions in the game for a reason.
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u/dbchrisyo Feb 24 '26
Dude LOR was so good, best PVP card game I've played I think. Then they shit on themselves by focusing on their shitty slay the spire game mode.
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u/MaybeItsMadison Feb 24 '26
I still cant believe how hard they fumbled LOR. It was genuinely a great competitive card game and then they were like "Uhmmm actually, you guys aren't giving us enough money, so we're decimating the pvp and making it a pve card game now" and only then did they add it to the League client. I dont think they ever even marketed the game once
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u/aphex1991 Feb 24 '26
Riot never has done anything original. The entire company is build on ripping off ideas made by others. Ironically they are first to sue the chinese for clones of ideas that they stole in the first place LMAO
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u/Reasonable-Pea3492 Feb 24 '26
Man, when I first saw Deadlock announced I wasn't convinced. Was burnt out on hero shooters after grinding overwatch ranked every season since 2016, and then Marvel Rivals casually, some Paladins sprinkled in somewhere in between all that.
...And then I played it... seriously awesome game. It makes other hero shooters feel incredibly undercooked by comparison. The theme of this game, the movement, the character depth and items... top tier. Really what Overwatch 2 probably should have been if they wanted to keep things interesting.
Hope this game goes far and inspires other games to push things a little further than the bare minimum that has seem to become the norm.
It's interesting to me how execution and timing make all the difference as this isn't he first hero shooter with a more MOBA focus that has been released. IMO this is just the absolute best iteration of that concept by a long shot. Battleborn, Paragon, etc. (while I admittedly enjoyed) don't even come close to Deadlock.
Riot and Blizz are definitely going to step it up quite a bit once Deadlock gets its full release.
The one thing I will say is that I'm curious to know how the majority of people who have literally 0 MOBA experience or knowledge will transition over to a game like this. As it stands, Overwatch and Valorant feel like a bit of a more casual friendly experience (as far as getting started) without items/laning - but I think if people can push past the initial learning curve, it is a much more enjoyable experience than those games.
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u/zedroj Mina Feb 24 '26
It would be good to get deadlock clones, I'm hoping for a new GunZ successor or Rakion
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u/Kaiser_V9 Feb 24 '26
Was gonna say that would be a dumb move, having ur flagship be MOBA and Hero Shooter. Then realize Valve is also somewhat in the same position, Dota2 and (stretch) tft.
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u/Tepodama_96 Feb 25 '26
The TF2 vs OW discourse was already bad/tiring enough, so you know the rest is just gonna be the same shit
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u/QuantityHappy4459 Feb 25 '26
the OW vs Ricals discourse is tiring.
Some of yall weren't there for that time when Team Fortress 2's community had a toxic rivalry with quite literally every other shooter in existence. Shit, the reason Deadlock even became public was because of insanely bitter TF2 fans leaking the game. They were pissed learning Valve was making this.
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u/QuantityHappy4459 Feb 25 '26
the OW vs Ricals discourse is tiring.
Some of yall weren't there for that time when Team Fortress 2's community had a toxic rivalry with quite literally every other shooter in existence. Shit, the reason Deadlock even became public was because of insanely bitter TF2 fans leaking the game. They were pissed learning Valve was making this.
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u/LogBasedN Billy Feb 24 '26
If the drama becomes that similar, then I can play Vindicta and use the excuse that "I'm just trying to vibe" when I go 0-6.