Today, we have an exciting update: Duncan and Paul, alongside many other talented members at Hopoo Games, will now be working on game development directly at @valvesoftware

  • The way they are handling Deadlock has many parallels to Dota 2. For example: popular invite-only playtest, probably a free-to-play model with cosmetics for sale, Dota 2/Icefrog style gameplay depth and balancing.

    This game has consistently had more players than most games on Steam without even being released yet. I think it is far from going the way of Artifact, and is much more likely to take a place alongside Dota 2 and CS2 as a giant multiplayer game with indefinite longevity.

      • Well, we can also look at their other games for this. For example, in Dota 2, everyone has a behavior score, based on reports and such. This is used for matchmaking on top of skill, and lower behavior scores result in certain restrictions (like can’t speak, can’t ping as much, can’t play ranked, can’t pause).

        • I haven’t played Dota2 for years, but the toxicity was a reason I stopped. So I am not sure this thing is effective. I know its a tough task, but still I believe that if one developer can have better solutions to this, than it would be Valve.

          •  HER0   ( @HER0@beehaw.org ) 
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            9 days ago

            This has improved further in recent years, so you probably weren’t seeing how it is now.

            It may be different in other regions, but I see significantly less toxicity in Dota 2 compared to Counter-Strike, the only other big competitive game I have enough time in to compare it to. Though my CS experience was longer ago, and they could have improved things there, too.