Valve’s Deadlock has kicked off its second ranked season with tougher rules at the top. Ranked Beta Season 2, announced by Valve on its Steam page on November 5, strips rank loss protection from the three highest tiers, raises hero bans from three to four per match and runs for four months, until Thursday, March 11, 2027.
The changes land at a busy moment for a game that still is not officially released. Deadlock remains an invite-only beta on Steam with no launch date, yet its concurrent player count climbed to 303,347 in October 2026, passing Valve’s own Team Fortress 2.
What changes in Ranked Beta Season 2
Valve’s announcement lists the rule changes in detail. The most important ones for regular players:
- No safety net at the top: players ranked Phantom, Ascendant or Eternus no longer get any loss protection “shields.” Before, they had five at a full rank boundary and two between subranks.
- Fewer shields for everyone else: five shields become three at a full rank boundary, and two become one between subranks. A player at Mystic I with zero points now drops to Sentinel after three losses, not five.
- More points per game: each match is now worth 350 rank points, up from 300.
- Cheaper promotions: moving up a full badge from the final subrank takes 1,500 points instead of 2,000; the 1,000-point gap between subranks stays the same.
- Four bans: each ranked match now bans four heroes instead of three.
A two-step rank reset
Season 1 players will collect a commemorative Hideout plaque showing the highest rank they reached. Everyone’s rank then goes through two adjustments. First, Valve redistributes the whole ladder to account for what it calls “the recent influx of new players.” Second, a soft reset knocks players down by about one badge on average, with a further one or two subrank tweak based on last season’s win rate.
Because the redistribution comes first, Valve warns that some players may actually move up despite the reset. Returning ranked players skip calibration; newcomers to ranked still have to calibrate.
Why the numbers matter
A quick calculation shows how much faster climbing gets. Under the old rules, a win worth 300 points meant about seven wins to cross a 2,000-point badge gap. Now 350 points per win against a 1,500-point gap means five wins: 4.3 rounded up. Between subranks, 1,000 points falls from four wins to three. Losing a badge also comes sooner, since fewer shields protect it.
A season of new heroes and patches
The ranked reset follows a run of big updates. The City Never Sleeps update in September added six heroes chosen by in-game vote and overhauled the map, bringing the roster to 44 characters by October. A Halloween update on October 30 reworked the Mid-Boss, raising its health by 20 percent and splitting its Rejuvenator reward into three crystals, while scattering candy cauldrons around the city through November 2.
Valve followed with a balance patch on November 4 that trimmed heroes including Baba, Celeste and Deadman Danny and gave buffs to Apollo, Mo & Krill, Nurse Harrow and Rat King. Rat King, the community-designed hero, got more ammo (26, up from 24) and a slightly faster ultimate.
Deadlock’s Steam page still describes it as early development “with lots of temporary art and experimental gameplay,” and access still comes through a friend invite from an existing playtester. For more on PC gaming, see how Find The Needle topped Steam’s demo chart, and the Golden Joystick Awards 2026 winners.
Further reading
Image: Matthew Wiebe, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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