Deadlock's matchmaking is so broken even developers are getting thrown into wrong lobbies

Deadlock is still going through limited playtesting, but matchmaking issues have already reached critical levels. The bugs are affecting even the developers.

In the official Deadlock Discord server, accessible only through the game itself, one player complained to Valve developer Yoshi: "The matchmaking is still messed up, im ascendant 3 and i got put into an oracle lobby." Yoshi responded: "same here." The situation has clearly spiraled out of control.

Ascendant is the second-highest rank in Deadlock, while Oracle sits roughly in the middle of the rating table. Many players note that the MOBA constantly places them in matches that don't match their skill level, either being too difficult or too easy.

Please god I'll even take a full rank reset by this point. I'm in Oracle 4 and I don't belong. I'm not a good player and should be down in like ritualist. And if I want to get to a more appropriate rank I have to basically throw games for my team to get there. Wasting tens of hours of matches.

Another player from Asia added:

I was an Asia player and yesterday, I was placed in a Chicago server. I thought getting new players in my team was bad, but damn.

These conditions can't be called acceptable. If even Yoshi is landing in the wrong lobbies, players will have to live with it. Valve hasn't made any public statements about the state of matchmaking in Deadlock, but in 2024, Valve engineer Fletcher Dunn enthusiastically talked about using ChatGPT to create a new matchmaking algorithm. Then he implemented it in the game.