Roarty Digital has confirmed that its team is contributing to Valve’s Deadlock, with members of the external art studio revealing their involvement following the game’s major City Never Sleeps update. 3D character artist Rafael Rocha publicly said he has been working on Deadlock alongside the Roarty Digital team, while studio co-founder Dan Roarty separately confirmed that the company contributed to City Never Sleeps. The disclosures establish Roarty Digital as one of the external development partners currently working on Valve’s still-unreleased multiplayer game.
Rocha announced his involvement in a LinkedIn post, saying he could finally share that he had been working on Deadlock with Roarty Digital. Other artists from the company also posted similar messages around the release of the update, including Thiago Sarri, who described working with the team on Valve’s project. Dan Roarty subsequently said the studio was “very excited” to have been part of Deadlock: City Never Sleeps and congratulated everyone involved with the update.
Roarty Digital is a Vancouver-based co-development and outsourcing studio specializing in character art, environments, rigging, weapons, props and other game assets. The company describes itself as supporting both AAA and independent productions rather than developing its own games from start to finish. Rocha previously identified himself as a 3D artist at Roarty Digital and has discussed work with Epic Games on LEGO Fortnite, while the studio’s broader credits include work across several major game productions.
Valve released City Never Sleeps as a major Deadlock update on September 29, 2026. The update substantially overhauled the game’s New York City-inspired map, introduced six new heroes, replaced existing neutral enemies with new creatures and behaviors, updated the HUD and added a variety of quality-of-life and accessibility changes. Valve also introduced new areas and objectives around the map, continuing a broader effort to replace temporary assets and systems while Deadlock remains in active development.
The scale of the update makes Roarty Digital’s involvement notable because visual development remains one of Deadlock’s most visibly unfinished areas. Valve continues to describe the current version as an early development build containing temporary art and experimental gameplay, and the studio has said there is still significant work to do before a wider public release. City Never Sleeps represented one of the game’s largest visual passes so far, particularly across its map, environments and supporting assets.
Valve has not detailed exactly which individual characters, environments or assets were produced by Roarty Digital. The public statements from Rocha, Sarri and Dan Roarty confirm the company’s participation but do not provide a full breakdown of its responsibilities, so attributing specific Deadlock models or redesigns to the studio would go beyond what has been disclosed. The safest conclusion is that Roarty Digital contributed art-development work to the project and helped Valve ship the City Never Sleeps update.
Deadlock itself remains available through limited-access testing rather than a conventional public release. Valve says access is currently restricted to friend invitations from existing playtesters, and the Steam listing still carries no announced release date. Despite that limited availability, the City Never Sleeps update pushed the game to more than 228,000 concurrent Steam players shortly after launch, highlighting the unusually large audience already following the project during development.
Roarty Digital’s confirmation also provides another glimpse at how Valve is staffing Deadlock as development expands. Rather than relying exclusively on its internal team, Valve is using external specialists for at least some production work, a common approach on modern large-scale games where character, environment and asset creation can be distributed across multiple studios. With Deadlock still undergoing major visual and gameplay changes, Roarty Digital’s involvement may continue beyond City Never Sleeps, although neither company has publicly outlined the scope or duration of that relationship.
