Rat King is now playable in Deadlock after winning the City Never Sleeps vote, bringing a tank kit, rat-swarm abilities, and a loud signal about Valve’s roster direction.
Image: pcgamer.com
Rat King is live, and Deadlock’s roster experiment just got louder
Rat King is available to play in Deadlock now after winning the first City Never Sleeps hero vote, according to Valve’s Steam developer post as reported by Shacknews. The same report says players can vote on the next unlock until Tuesday, October 6, 2026 at 2 p.m. PT, with the remaining City Never Sleeps characters still waiting their turn.
That is the concrete news. The tension is what Valve chose to put in players’ hands first: a giant sewer monarch with a frontline kit, a swarm of rats, and enough personality that PC Gamer highlighted him as having over 100 voice lines dedicated to throwing rats at enemies. For a shooter-MOBA still being shaped in public, the Deadlock Rat King vote is a strong read on what the active player base wants from a Deadlock new hero. They did not pick the safest silhouette or the cleanest gunfighter fantasy. They picked the monster mob boss with a crown of scrap and a plan for Ratannia.
The City Never Sleeps vote also matters because it turns hero release order into a live community decision. Shacknews reports that six new characters were revealed with the update and that voting decides the order in which they unlock. Deadlock Labs lists the release lineup as one hero at a time, with a new unlock every Tuesday and Friday at 2 p.m. PT. Its own ballot is separate from Valve’s in-game vote, and the site clearly notes that Deadlock Labs votes count only for its own tally while the game keeps its own. That distinction is important for players trying to track the race without confusing a third-party poll for the official result.
Valve turned a community joke into a playable tank
PCGamesN reports that Rat King’s arrival follows more than a year of community demand, sparked by a fan concept from Reddit user CycloneScones, also identified by the outlet as Liornogard or Dragonroilz. That original pitch imagined Rat King in a corporate Wall Street role, wearing a suit and tie. Valve’s in-game version went heavier and nastier: PCGamesN describes him as a chunky sewer overlord with a scrap crown, bandolier, cape, and hanging trinkets.
That change says a lot about Valve’s read on Deadlock’s tone. Deadlock’s setting, often framed around its occult version of New York, can carry absurd ideas if the silhouette, kit, and audio sell them fast in a match. Rat King keeps the meme value, but Valve appears to have rebuilt the idea around readability and combat role. PCGamesN calls him a “menacing frontline tank” that should be easy for new players to pick up and learn.
Deadlock Labs’ hero page reinforces the bruiser profile with early stat context. The site lists Rat King at 800 level-one health, ranked 12th of 39 heroes, with health regen ranked fourth, sprint speed ranked ninth, stamina ranked fifth, and heavy melee ranked fifth. Those are third-party listed stats rather than a Valve balance manifesto, but they line up with the role Valve appears to be pushing: get in, absorb pressure, force messy fights, and make enemy backlines deal with bodies, bullets, and rats all at once.
The kit is built for pressure, not delicate poke
Rat King’s weapon, Sovereign’s Decree, is described by PCGamesN as a rapid-fire rifle with a 24-round magazine that fires two shots at a time. One shot lands where the player aims, while the second lands somewhere nearby. PCGamesN also reports that its falloff starts at 20 meters and caps at 50. That is a very specific gunfeel choice. It gives Rat King a reliable anchor shot while still making the weapon feel rough, noisy, and close-range friendly rather than a precision dueling tool.
His first ability, Scrap Grenade, pushes that same brawling rhythm. PCGamesN says it has a large eight-meter radius and bounces through three detonations, damaging and slowing victims by 20%. The outlet also notes that players can melee the grenade to send it in a chosen direction, which is the kind of interaction that matters in Deadlock’s lane fights and cramped rotations. A tank with a bouncing explosive can clear space. A tank who can manually redirect it can punish players trying to hide behind geometry.
Rat Swarm is the ability that will define the character for a lot of players. PCGamesN reports that it sends rodents forward up to 50 meters in a mostly straight line, where they can latch onto enemies they pass. Up to five rats can attach to a character, with each biting once per second. Deadlock Labs lists the same ability as part of the core kit, alongside Scrap Grenade, Royal Pestments, and the ultimate Rule, Ratannia! Even without full match data from Valve, the shape is obvious: Rat King wants targets to respect lanes of approach, not merely crosshair placement.
Royal Pestments is the defensive piece. According to PCGamesN, it gives Rat King a six-second barrier worth 15% of his maximum health and reflects 15% of incoming bullet damage while active. At maximum upgrade, PCGamesN says the duration reaches ten seconds, the barrier rises to 25% of max health, the return chance reaches 30%, and any single instance of incoming damage is capped at 250. If those values hold through early tuning, this is the part of the kit most likely to warp duels. Bullet damage reflection and damage caps can change whether the correct call is to burn him down, kite him, or ignore him while he takes space.
The rat-throwing voice lines are part of the design, not garnish
PC Gamer’s Rat King coverage highlights one of the funniest and most practical details around the hero: the site reports that Deadlock’s new hero has over 100 voice lines dedicated to throwing rats at enemies. The supplied source material does not list those lines in full, but Deadlock Labs does surface several official-sounding hero barks on its Rat King page, including “Listen up, crumbums! Your king is here!”, “The humans had their turn,” “Long Island is gonna be mine,” “I ain’t here for the ballet!”, and “Aw, the rats are taking over, baby!”
For a competitive shooter lead, the important part is not only that the lines are funny. Audio identity affects how a hero reads under pressure. Deadlock is asking players to track lanes, vertical routes, neutral camps, cooldowns, gunfire, and ability tells at the same time. A hero with an exaggerated voice profile can become easier to identify in chaos, especially if his most disruptive actions, like sending rats into a fight, carry distinct callouts.
There is a risk, too. A character built around constant rat jokes can get old if the audio mix repeats too aggressively or masks information players need more. The PC Gamer detail suggests Valve put a surprising amount of recording effort into Rat King’s core gag, but the real test is match readability. If those voice lines help opponents understand when rats are coming, they support counterplay. If they mainly add noise, players will notice quickly.
Early numbers say he is winning, but the sample needs context
Deadlock Labs lists Rat King at a 59.8% win rate across 37.1K matches since unlock, ranked first on the roster by win rate on that page. That is an eye-catching first stat, and it will feed every “new hero is busted” argument in the short term. It should also be handled carefully. These are Deadlock Labs figures, not a Valve balance post, and early hero data is always distorted by pick rates, mirror effects, unfamiliar counterplay, and players testing builds before the meta stabilizes.
Still, Rat King’s kit has obvious reasons to spike early. He brings survivability, slows, persistent pressure through Rat Swarm, and a weapon that does not demand perfect tracking to contribute in close fights. New heroes with straightforward fight plans often overperform before the lobby learns spacing, itemization, and timing windows. PCGamesN’s description of him as easy for new players to learn fits that pattern.
The City Never Sleeps map changes may also help him. Deadlock Labs says the update rebuilt the city with four districts between lanes, converted every camp into a Haunt camp, added hiding and breakable elements, and removed speed pads. The site lists steam vents that hide players from enemy view while stopping stamina regeneration, tough crates that require heavy melee and always drop souls, healing snacks that restore 10% of max health over four seconds, and golden statues with permanent buff options. A big tank with strong melee stats and area pressure has plenty to work with in a denser, more interactive map. That does not prove he is overtuned, but it explains why his launch environment may be friendly.
The vote signals a roster direction built around strong silhouettes
Rat King winning the Deadlock City Never Sleeps vote is not only a popularity contest result. It is feedback to Valve about what kind of roster energy Deadlock players will reward. The winning hero is grotesque, loud, mechanically direct, and deeply tied to the city theme. He is also a community-born idea that Valve reshaped rather than copied directly, according to PCGamesN’s account of the original fan concept and the final in-game design.
That matters for future unlocks because the City Never Sleeps cadence gives Valve repeated public tests of appetite. Shacknews reports that players can vote for the next hero unlock by the following Tuesday, while Deadlock Labs lists a broader schedule running through October 20 for all six unlock slots. If each vote turns into a referendum on tone, role, and fantasy, Valve gets a live read on whether Deadlock players prefer cleaner competitive archetypes, weirder monsters, or characters that push the setting’s occult New York identity harder.
For players, the practical guidance is simple. Rat King is playable now. If you are queueing into him, expect close-range pressure, rat-based harassment, and a defensive window that can punish careless bullet dumping. If you are trying him, do not treat him like a pure aim duel character. His value appears to be in forcing bad movement, eating attention, and making fights ugly enough for your team to win the trade.
The open question is balance. Valve has not provided, in the supplied sources, a detailed long-term tuning plan for Rat King or the remaining City Never Sleeps heroes. The next vote will show which character players want next. Rat King’s first week will show whether Valve’s new sewer king is a fun frontliner, an early overtune, or both.