Deadlock’s City Never Sleeps Update Adds 6 New Heroes, Including Rat King, and a Full Map Overhaul

Valve has rolled out its biggest Deadlock update yet. Called City Never Sleeps, the September 29 patch overhauls the look of the game’s central map, adds a new merchant NPC, reworks several UI elements, and introduces six new heroes that will be released gradually over the coming weeks rather than all at once.

Six New Heroes, Two at a Time

The update’s headline additions are six new playable heroes: Nurse Harrow, Rat King, Solomon, Deadman Danny, Baba, and Violet. Rather than dropping all six at once, Valve is releasing them in pairs on Tuesdays and Fridays, with the order decided by a player vote. Rat King in particular has roots in Deadlock’s own community, with fan-made hero concepts for a rat-themed character circulating on the game’s forums long before Valve turned the idea into an official pick.

Gameplay screenshot from Valve’s Deadlock

A Reworked City and a New Merchant

Deadlock’s map has also been visually overhauled, with lanes and back alleys redressed into several new themed districts, including a Chinatown area built around a new bell tower landmark. Valve has scattered new environmental props and hazards throughout, alongside a new mysterious merchant character called the Broker, who offers players item trades that come with their own upsides and downsides rather than straightforward purchases.

Clearer UI and Quality-of-Life Fixes

Beyond the new content, City Never Sleeps focuses heavily on readability. Health bars, ally indicators, and the kill feed have all been redesigned to be easier to parse in the middle of a fight, and the in-game shop has been reworked to make item builds simpler to put together on the fly. Valve also expanded hero voice lines and added new tools for setting up practice matches against bots.

Deadlock remains an invite-only playtest years after gameplay footage first leaked online, and Valve still hasn’t announced a public release date or a move into early access. Updates like this one, though, suggest the studio is continuing to treat it as an active, evolving project rather than a shelved experiment.

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Picture Source: Valve