xQc’s initial reaction to Deadlock was negative. He criticized the game’s mechanics, the lack of depth in its gameplay, and the overall design. He compared Deadlock to other popular shooter games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) and Valorant, highlighting the similarities and differences.

In another clip, shared on the same day, he tells a friend “you should play this game, man. This game is actually the future of gaming. This game is actually fun. Deadlock, this shit goes hard.” That friend seems a little confused by this sudden change of heart, suggesting that xQc had previously claimed that Deadlock would be “dead on arrival,” but the streamer swiftly changes the subject rather than investigate those claims further. “This game is actually the future of gaming” xQc’s NEW THOUGHTS on Deadlock pic.twitter.com/tXf6rVjnRsSeptember 9, 2024 As a long-time League of Legends player, I can see what’s happened here. There aren’t many genres of game where you can be starved out as hard as you can in a MOBA – fall too far behind, and it does often feel like you’re not able to do anything except wait for your opponents to potentially make a mistake. In xQc’s defense, those are the LoL games where I complain loudest about how I’m never playing again, but there’s no one to hold me to those claims when I inevitably run it back a few minutes later.

The sentiment around Deadlock does seem to be pretty positive in the esports community – in August, former FPS pro Shroud said the game was “going to easily take over,” while a number of players say they’re planning to leave the content creation spaces for their current games in order to pursue Deadlock. With Valve’s reputation for shooters and its experience with esports, however, maybe that’s not too much of a surprise. As cheating in Deadlock rears its head, Valve goes, yeah, maybe anti-cheat for its new hero shooter is a good idea.