No, Riot Games isn’t making a Deadlock competitor

Following numerous rumors based on a fake PC Gamer article, Riot Games has confirmed on Twitter that it is not making a Deadlock hero shooter competitor. Senior director of corporate communications at Riot, Joe Hixson, also states that “Tencent doesn’t fund our dev like this,” and that other games are in research and development at Riot at the moment, but that none resemble the new Valve game.

On Wednesday October 2, a tweet that included an alleged screenshot of a PC Gamer article which said Tencent had given Riot Games $200 million to develop a Deadlock competitor started to go viral. Joe Hixson has since replied to the tweet, confirming that the screenshot was fake and that the article doesn’t even exist.

A quick glance at the image shows that the ‘article’ was written on March 14, 2024. Given Valve only fully confirmed the MOBA‘s existence in August, this is slightly perplexing. The header image is also a photoshopped version of the Chinese flag, with the Riot Games fist logo replacing the big yellow star in the top-left corner.

Additionally, PCGamesN looked through PC Gamer’s website, and on first glance there does not appear to be any writers called Mark Higgs.

In response to a post that presents the fake article as being fact, Hixson confirms that “there’s a lot cooking in R&D, but nothing like Deadlock.” He also said that Tencent funding doesn’t work as the rumor suggested, saying, “Tencent doesn’t fund our dev like this… that’s not how this works… that’s not how any of this works.”

If you’re still getting familiar with Valve’s game, check out our Deadlock characters tier list, and our Deadlock release date guide will keep you up to date on when to expect the full launch.

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