Valve assures Deadlock players hungry for its next big update that it will notify them, 'or order a ton of pizza', when it's ready

I don't envy Deadlock players who are dying to see the hybrid MOBA-shooter continue to grow in its pseudo-early access state. Valve is notoriously elusive when it comes to communication and has never made any promises to update it on a regular schedule.

This is the kind of uncertainty that drives Deadlock players to salivate over any new rumor or post by the developer-run Discord and forum account known as Yoshi. It's also what drives them to keep watch over the pizzerias near Valve's Seattle offices for spikes in visitors in the hopes that developers are lining up for grub as they finish the next major update.

This week, Deadlock players were hoping Valve would release its follow-up to the Old Gods, New Blood update, which added six new heroes to the game along with other major changes. Valve previously said a "large content update" was in the works alongside two other smaller updates to its ranked mode and items. But now that the ranked rework is out of the way, players were hoping to see another update before the end of the month.

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According to a new post from Yoshi, the update is taking longer than expected. Yoshi doesn't specify if they're talking about the item update or the large content update—it almost implies they've been combined into one patch—but said it's going to have to wait until "late September."

"The delay is mainly due to the regular process of playtesting and iteration sometimes taking longer than expected, rather than a change in the scope of the update itself," they wrote. "We hope you will like the update when it comes out, and we'll make sure to give you a heads up (or order a ton of pizza) when things are a few days away or so."

Even though Valve has kept Deadlock an invite-only game since its debut, the last year of updates have gotten it to a place that feels like it could go fully public as an open beta. You never know with Valve, a studio that has spent years on projects only to quietly abandon them before. But the Old Gods, New Blood update was the first time it made a big deal of a new patch, creating an entire webpage dedicated to it and letting the community vote on the release order of the new heroes.

It was an unprecedented level of effort that seemed to suggest Deadlock had a relatively large amount of weight behind it for a Valve project. Since then, the updates have kept a steady pace.

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Whether or not Yoshi's acknowledgement of the pizza thing is tongue-in-cheek, it does make it seem like the team behind Deadlock is aware that players desperately want more from the game and that it plans to deliver on that as fast as it can. I hope it also means Deadlock is closer than ever to opening the gates for everyone to try its sharply-designed mix of MOBA and hero shooter mechanics.