How to Get Deadlock in 2026: Invites, Access and How to Invite Friends

Is Deadlock still invite only?

Yes. Valve's Steam page says access is currently limited to friend invites from its playtesters, lists the game as not yet available and gives no release date. Many players call it the Deadlock beta, but there is no Deadlock open beta and no way to buy your way in. The Deadlock playtest has no monetization at all, and Valve has not announced a Deadlock price or business model for the full release. City Never Sleeps, the biggest update so far, arrived on September 29, 2026 and kept the invite system as it was.

How to get a Deadlock invite

Every Deadlock invite comes from a player who already has the game and goes to someone on their Steam friends list. A friend who already plays is the fastest way in. If nobody you know plays yet, this is how to get access to Deadlock through the community:

1. Post your Steam friend code in a community invite thread: the Deadlock discussions on Steam or the invite megathread on r/DeadlockTheGame. You find the code in Steam under Add a Friend.
2. Accept the friend request from the player who offers to invite you.
3. Wait for the invite and accept it on Steam, as described below.

One catch: a limited Steam account, one that has not spent at least $5 on Steam, cannot send friend requests. If yours is limited, ask the other player to add you instead.

How to invite friends to Deadlock

Once you are in, here is how to invite someone to Deadlock. You can invite people to Deadlock from your Steam friends list with no limit on how many:

1. Add the person as a friend on Steam if you have not already.
2. Launch Deadlock and open the friend invite option in the main menu.
3. Pick your friend from the list and send the invite.
4. Tell them to watch their Steam notifications, because the invite has to be accepted before the game appears in their library.

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That is how to send a Deadlock invite, and the steps are the same whether you invite a friend to Deadlock or someone you met in an invite thread. Give a new invite time to arrive before you send another one.

Deadlock invite not showing up: what to check

A Deadlock invite usually arrives within a few hours. If it has been longer, go through these checks in order:

• Open your Steam playtest invites page. A pending invite waits there even when no notification appears.
• Check the notification bell at the top of the Steam client, and restart Steam if it shows nothing.
• Make sure you are Steam friends with the player who sent it. An invite can only go to someone on their friends list.
• If you have more than one Steam account, check that the invite went to the one you are signed in to.
• If you declined an invite in the past, you may not be able to receive a new one. Players with a stuck invite have got in after a different friend sent a fresh one.

Deadlock download and system requirements

There is no Deadlock download outside Steam. The game installs from your Steam library like any other Steam game, so a site offering it as a separate file is not official. Valve has not published system requirements yet: the store page lists them as to be determined and only asks for a 64-bit processor and operating system. Deadlock runs on Windows, the community wiki notes that it also runs on Linux through Proton, and Valve lists no Mac or console version.

What to do after you get in

Play the tutorial first, then a few matches on a hero that is easy to pick up. Our Deadlock characters guide lists the heroes that win most for new players. Ranked comes later: it needs 60 Standard wins and three heroes with 15 Standard wins each, as our Deadlock ranks guide explains.