Former Overwatch pro xQc had an interesting set of reactions to Valve's new hero shooter Deadlock, going from blasting the game as "dogshit" to describing it as "the future of gaming."
In a clip from his stream (via Deadlock Intel), xQC - who played on the Dallas Fuel Overwatch League team and also represented Canada in the game's world cup - is having a very bad game. With his team down more than 40,000 souls (Deadlock's combined currency and XP marker), the streamer finds himself taking huge damage from his opponent and offering almost nothing back in return.
"The game is dogshit," xQc complains after he finds himself almost one-shot by an enemy player, despite his teammate's suggestion that they're enjoying the game more as they learn to play it better. Seemingly not too long after that, however, the streamer changed his mind pretty significantly.
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.
