Violet is the fifth hero from the Deadlock City Never Sleeps update. Valve released her on October 16 at 2pm Pacific, and that same evening Deadlock set a new concurrent player record on Steam.
Violet's abilities
She paints, and the paint is the weapon:
- Living Ink: her ink empowers her bullets and turns inspiration into reality.
- Flow State: she glides on her ink, weaving into danger to deal damage or away from it to escape.
- Still Life: a portrait that captures her enemies.
- Abstract Landscape: her ultimate, her biggest piece yet, surrounding her and everyone nearby.
The player record
According to SteamDB, as cited by Destructoid, 303,347 people were playing Deadlock at once on the evening of October 16. At the time that made it the fourth most-played game on Steam, even though it is still invite-only.
October's peaks followed the hero releases. Daily highs from the SteamPeaks tracker:
| Date | Release | Peak players |
|---|---|---|
| October 9 | Solomon | 262,145 |
| October 13 | Deadman Danny | 275,452 |
| October 16 | Violet | 303,347 |
| October 20 | Nurse Harrow | 279,472 |
On October 9 Deadlock had already passed Team Fortress 2's all-time peak of 253,997, as PC Gamer reported. The record Violet broke, 275,452, was set on Danny's release day. Nurse Harrow's release on October 20 did not beat it, so as of October 22 the record still belongs to Violet's evening.
Violet by the numbers
We counted normal-mode matches across all ranks from her release, 21:00 UTC on October 16, to 19:55 UTC on October 22 (data from deadlock-api.com):
| Hero | Games | Pick share | Win rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Violet | 513,178 | 6.1% | 50.4% |
| Deadman Danny | 451,538 | 5.4% | 49.1% |
| Rat King | 427,680 | 5.1% | 56.4% |
Rat King still wins 56% after his ultimate was cut back; see our breakdown of the Rat King nerf.
Violet is the most picked hero of the week, chosen by roughly one player in sixteen. Her 50.4% win rate puts her mid-table, 17th of 44. She has not had a balance change yet: the latest one, the Deadlock patch October 14, came out before her.
The sixth and final hero was Harrow; see Nurse Harrow is out in Deadlock. Track how the heroes move on our Deadlock tier list, and find them all on the Deadlock characters page.