Valve keeping up with the trend of "worst kept secrets". You need an invite to join the alpha but since everyone who owns it can refer their friends, it spread very quickly.
I've been playing it the past few days and it's honestly very fun. Still a bit rough around the edges (especially in terms of balance) since it's in early access, but it has serious potential to be dota 2 levels of popular.
For the unaware, Deadlock is a 3rd person shooter MOBA. It feels like a mix of Dota and Overwatch/Team Fortress. Nobody is allowed to share footage or screenshots, but obviously with so many playing there's a ton of leaks out there.
Not really, SMITE is a moba that happens to be 3rd person, Deadlock actually plays like a 3rd person shooter that needs proper aiming and headshots and a much faster pace.
I see. This is probably a pretty niche reference nowadays, but is it more similar to Monday Night Combat? That was an actual shooter IIRC and had moba mechanics like lanes and creeps.
Good, cause I played the Smite 2 alpha and it was kinda garbage. I literally said out loud "this is like Dota for babies". It didn't even have good FPS mechanics to make up for no depth.
It's actually closer to Battleborn. Like the other commenter said, it's more of a third person shooter with MOBA elements. There's focus on movement (you can dash, double jump, crouch slide, some characters fly), headshots and distance change the damage and melee/parry are just a button, while every character has guns as their man attack means. For the moba elements, it changes a bit since there's 4 lanes and it's a 6x6.