Valve overhauls Deadlock’s matchmaking with new Ranked Mode

Valve has released a major matchmaking update for Deadlock, formally splitting casual and competitive play with a revamped Ranked Mode alongside the existing Standard Mode.

The new season began immediately with the update and runs until October 7, at which point the highest rank a player achieved will be permanently saved to their profile.

Getting into Ranked and climbing the ladder

To queue for Ranked, players now need at least 60 wins in Standard Mode, and can only select heroes they have won at least 15 games with.

Players must also have a minimum of three eligible heroes unlocked before they can queue at all.

The new rank system spans eleven tiers, from Initiate through Seeker, Acolyte, Sentinel, Mystic, Ritualist, Emissary, Oracle, Phantom, Ascendant and finally Eternus, each split into six subranks.

New players entering the season will go through an eight-game calibration phase, with a soft reset applied to their prior rank to help seed them appropriately.

Ranked currently only supports solo or duo parties, with duo partners required to sit within one rank of each other, while Eternus players can only queue together if they are within three subranks.

Rank Points are earned or lost with each match, generally around 250 per game, with 1,000 points needed to progress a subrank and 2,000 required for the final push into a new rank.

Standard Mode remains the low-stakes option

Standard Mode continues to serve as a lower-stakes way to play with friends, with no restrictions on party size or skill spread and no impact on Rank.

Valve has also introduced a pre-game phase allowing players to swap into a different unlocked hero before a match begins, alongside an increase in the number of heroes banned per game from two to three.

In other Deadlock news, a modder was found selling $20 skins for the game before Valve had even introduced its own monetization system.