Despite pulling in 12,000 players this weekend, Valve still hasn't acknowledged the Overwatch-style shooter everyone knows it's making

Valve's long-rumoured but still-unannounced hero shooter is basically the worst kept secret in gaming this year, and despite the company remaining tight-lipped about the project everyone knows exists, more than 12,000 people were in-game this weekend.

Rumblings about Deadlock have been swirling around the internet for a while, but the game is all but confirmed at this point. Valve trademarked the name Deadlock earlier this summer "to cover the categories of entertainment services, namely, providing online video games," right after alleged leaked images and gameplay clips showed off MOBA-style lanes, Bioshock Infinite-style rails, and 19 playable heroes .

Those leaks were thought to have come from a hush-hush playtest listed on Steam's backend that attracted over 1,000 players a couple of months ago. SteamDB now estimates that Deadlock's behind-closed-doors playtest surpassed well over 10,000 concurrent players over the weekend, hitting an all-time peak of 12,000 yesterday, on August 11 - numbers that some other heavyweight shooters would be envious of. Though, more than a few playtesters have decided to ignore whatever embargo is in place for Deadlock's secret beta.

What's more curious about the whole thing is that Valve hasn't offered an official squeak about the game at all, electing to instead go mute about the project despite it being in the public consciousness now. I could see Valve going with the Counter-Strike 2 route with this one, officially announcing it on a random weekday before swiftly rolling out more public playtests in preparation for a full release. Or maybe it'll join Half-Life 3 and get banished to the Never Coming Out realm of existence.

Regardless, the fact that these playlists seem to be steadily growing in player counts should signal that Deadlock might be inching closer and closer to release - or, fingers crossed, an announcement at the very least.

Speaking of, Half-Life 3 was once again claimed to be in the works, this time from a voice actor’s resume that said the threequel would feature “off-world” gameplay with vehicles.