Before officially existing, it was already causing a sensation, but what has happened since Valve officially announced Deadlock is hard to believe. A video game that until recently we knew nothing about and that is in closed beta format has become one of the most popular on all of Steam. There is no doubt that the developers will be delighted with the reception of their hybrid between MOBA and hero shooter. However, success has also brought with it a problem whose only solution is the most radical.
Valve bans websites for stats on Deadlock
Around competitive games that are popular enough, websites known as ‘trackers’ are usually created. These offer information about certain statistics of the game in question. In the case of hero-based games, one can expect to find information on how many times a certain hero is selected, what percentage of games they win, what items they usually choose, or the performance of each of them. A variety of data aimed at allowing players to optimize decision-making and improve their efficiency in the game.
These types of pages exist, in addition to the existence of a real demand for this information, because developers allow them. Offering this data makes journalists and content creators talk more about the title, allows users to quickly catch up after a while disconnected, and has a positive effect on how the community values the game balance. Valve itself seems to have a positive opinion of these websites, as for years there have been no problems with pages focused on Dota 2. However, the Deadlock developers have just banned them.
Example image with (outdated) information provided by the most popular Deadlock ‘tracker’.
Upon entering TrackLock, the most popular statistics tracking website for Deadlock, the page indicates that it has been unable to obtain new statistics since September 2nd. A situation that the creator of the service confirmed in their official Discord: “Valve has imposed much more aggressive limits and now tracking new matches is not possible (…) I would like to tell you not to complain to Valve. This game is in beta and obviously not ready for ‘tracker’ websites. We will take this time to improve some functions and return when there is a solution.”
Valve has banned the collection of statistics because Deadlock is in beta and, especially in this phase of the game, information can be a problem. The official function of these pages is to make users optimize decision-making, which in itself is a problem. To improve a game’s design, you need to see how users make mistakes, try strange things, and play by following their intuition. In this sense, it is most likely that the development team will allow data collection again when the release approaches or competitive modes are tested.
Victory statistics can, for example, make a character more popular; which ‘muddies’ the data that Valve wants to collect.
To fully understand it, we can use the example of Riot Games. The creators of LoL have also made the decision to ban the collection of statistics on some game modes. “Arena is a game mode that encourages players to try new things. We think it will be stronger if, through experimentation, we can see paths in the metagame that make it progress,” they said when banning certain functions of ‘trackers’ last year for their summer event. In this sense, there is a conclusion. Although generally these services offer many more positives than negatives, there are certain situations in which they can be counterproductive.
The development of Deadlock continues smoothly and the game continues to gain users at a good pace. It remains to be seen how long this particular testing phase of Valve’s video game will last. Although, if you want to be optimistic, I remind you of something. The testing phase of Dota 2 began in 2011 and ended in 2013… on the day the game officially launched.
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