Valve's new hero shooter Deadlock exceeds 150,000 concurrents despite still being invite-only as a new Portal 2 reference appears in-game

Valve's Deadlock has soared past 160,000 concurrent players, and now it's having a bit of fun by seemingly throwing a Portal reference into the mix.

The past weekend saw huge traffic for Deadlock, Valve's in-development hero shooter that was previously the worst-kept secret in the games industry. According to SteamDB, Deadlock achieved a staggering peak concurrent player count on Steam of 164,855 players, which is just wild numbers for a game that isn't even out yet and still requires manual invitations from existing players for newcomers to participate in.

At the same time, the new hero shooter is seemingly having a little fun with its development heritage. As seen below, Deadlock's teleporters, which spirit its heroes around the map in the blink of an eye, now apparently reference the main title card for Portal 2 - which is pretty thematically appropriate, even if it is a little on the nose for references. 

Both myself and other Twitter users reacting to the news above can't help but wonder if this means Deadlock has its own iteration of Aperture Science and the Black Mesa facility in its in-game world. It's a fair question, considering Valve's Team Fortress 2 also has its own iterations of iconic institutes from Valve's games.

In other Deadlock-related news, Deadlock's first major patch arrived last week, boasting over 100 changes, but chiefly addressed the power of pausing the game. Players were previously able to pause online matches for everyone, but the new update limited each team to pausing a total of three times during a game, which should go a long way to keeping things running smoothly.

Deadlock is "going to easily take over," says streamer Shroud, adding that it's the "best third-person shooter I've ever played."