Is Deadlock more of a MOBA player’s shooter or an FPS player’s MOBA?

With the recent, pretty deliberately placed Deadlock teaser at The International (not to mention Slack’s whole Infernus shtick), it’s clear Valve’s looking to shepherd some attention from the realm of the Dire and the Radiant to the Amber Hand and the Sapphire Flame. It was a fun and cheeky little moment, but it made me wonder: considering their other esports juggernaut for a second, which one has the larger crossover appeal?

Deadlock is already a phenomenon. It’s the subject of poorly thought-out exposés (and I wonder whether I should link The Verge’s screed or my own non-divine attempts at comedy), a massive player base, and a fascinating new take on genres we know and love.

There have been many discussions on where Deadlock falls on the shooter-to-MOBA scale (one whose existence was not even necessary before Valve’s inventive little gremlins came up with this new and addictive gameplay formula – sorry, SMITE), with some going as far as to say that the game “has guns, but that doesn’t make it a shooter,” which is certainly a take.

Now, as someone who never really got on the MOBA train, wasted thousands of hours on Counter-Strike, and loves Deadlock, I’ll say that it’s definitely close to the Dota style. Then again, as someone who’d struggle to hit the broad side of a barn being inside the barn, I definitely wasn’t playing CS for the crisp aim-related mechanics of it – but I’d still challenge anyone to play Deadlock without ever using their primaries. So much for it not being a shooter. A MOBA player's shooter? Now that's a different story.

So, enough about me, the eternal incompetent whose only applicable gaming skill is a large dose of self-deprecation. If you’re a casual Counter-Strike player, it’s clear you’ll find more room for self-expression in Deadlock. You can always splitpush with gleeful abandon or make a heroic rush for the urn to boost your team’s prospects, even if you’re hopeless in one-on-one fights.

However, what’s up with a Dota fan? The creeps, the lanes, the builds, the heroes – aren’t these fundamentally identical to the MOBA experience? But here, it comes with a larger dose of entry-level mechanical skills needed and an over-the-shoulder perspective unless you’re playing a particularly silly Vindicta build.

The mood and the atmosphere, the worldbuilding and the character snippets are nothing short of special, and in that sense, Deadlock definitely has more in common with Dota than CS. So perhaps if you’re less of a purist, interested in more than just the nuts and bolts of gameplay mechanics, you’ll find this aspect of Valve’s new title more appealing than the average Counter-Strike enjoyer.

Even at this early juncture, it’s clear that a lot of thought and care was put into Deadlock’s world and characters. You can’t say the same about Condom Man and the zillionth tiny adjustment made to Dust 2 over the decades. (This isn’t a criticism of CS, just an observation. Stupid solo missions and Phoenix Connexion aside, you’re not here for the lore. You want to click heads and plant bombs. And good for you!) While it’s not necessarily fair to compare the cadence of updates considering how early on in development Deadlock supposedly is, Counter-Strike certainly falls far behind in that regard, too, especially considering how a feature that was originally meant to be shipped for CS has apparently surfaced in Valve’s new game without ever making it to CS2.

A lot of this is academic, of course. But here’s an interesting question lurking beneath this basic discussion – will Deadlock eat more into Counter-Strike’s fandom or Dota’s? If Valve will inevitably cannibalize some of its own dedicated player base, where will the larger portion come from?

No doubt Valve would hope that the answer is “none of the above,” but the fans of hero shooters and other enthusiasts who are not yet captured by their two big titles. It’s VALORANT and Overwatch they have in their sights, not a case of friendly fire. Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if the synergy would be stronger with Dota, to the detriment of that particular game, too – an observation the super-early numbers seem to bear out as well. But one thing is for sure: it seems like they’ve got the number three on their hands – a terrifying prospect in more ways than one. If they finally found a way to count beyond two, who knows what else is possible?