Sixteen days of silence, then a silent build: Valve is preparing an official in-game leaderboard
Build 6686 shipped tonight without a word. In its files: the protocol of a per-season, per-region leaderboard with eligibility rules — recent activity, wins per hero, minimum rank. And a quiet tweak to Silver’s leap.
The silence lasted sixteen days — a record, as we had announced — and it ended tonight at 19:09 UTC with a build Valve did not announce. No patch note, not a line on Steam. Seventeen files changed. Our watch fired, and we read them.
What the build prepares: an official in-game leaderboard
The core of it sits in the protocol between the client and the game coordinator. It gains two new messages, "get leaderboard status" and its response, and that response says everything about what is coming.
It tells whether the player is eligible for a leaderboard, and if not, why: number of recent matches — with the required number —, number of lifetime matches, rank high enough or not, region. It then details, hero by hero, recent matches, lifetime wins and eligibility, again with required recent matches and wins per hero. One field states over how many days the history is examined.
In other words: a ladder run by Valve, by region, where you only appear by playing regularly, at a sufficient rank — and most likely per-hero leaderboards, reserved for those who actually play them.
Two other pieces confirm the assembly. The ranked seasons file, `ranked_seasons.vdata`, gains one line: a leaderboard identifier, 1001, attached to the current season. And the client code now knows how to map a leaderboard identifier to a rank schema and a season interval. Leaderboards are designed per season — which makes every sense one month before Beta Season 1 closes, and three weeks before the update Valve promises for late September.
We have displayed, for two weeks, the regional leaderboard the public API exposes. What this build announces is that Valve is about to own it in the game, with its own entry rules. Our rank pyramid, published yesterday, gives a sense of how high the bar sits: "rank high enough", in a population where Phantom is the top 4.4%, will not concern many.
A quiet tweak to Silver
The abilities file changes by a single line, on Silver's Mauling Leap: the "velocity carryover on hit" goes from −0.15 to 0. The negative value most likely pushed Silver back very slightly on hitting the target; at zero, the leap stops dead on it. It is the kind of feel fix that does not deserve a patch note in Valve's eyes — and that nobody would know about without reading the files.
And backstage
Two development commands replace the old playtest session locks: one lets an internal tester request matchmaking priority, with a specific hero. That is the tool used to test a hero in real conditions before release — its presence says nothing about the calendar, but it says the team is playing internally. Server-side, a chat rate limiting option appears, disabled.
What we cannot claim
None of this is live. A protocol added to the client is not a shipped feature; the eligibility conditions have fields, not values yet; and identifier 1001 sits on the season without the game showing anything. We read what Valve prepares, not what it has decided. If the leaderboard arrives with the late-September update, this is where it will be said, the same day.
Methodology. Build 6686 caught by our watch at 19:30 UTC on September 7, 2026, commit 70a2641 of the SteamDatabase/GameTracking-Deadlock repository (17 files): `citadel_gcmessages_client.proto`, `CRankedSeasonIntervalDefinition.h`, `LeaderboardID_t.h`, `ranked_seasons.vdata`, `abilities.vdata`, `commands.txt`, `convars.txt`, client and server strings. Absence of a note verified on Deadlock's Steam feed, whose latest announcement remains August 22's. Silence length: 15.9 days between build 6684 (August 22, 21:44 UTC) and this one.