Sending a Deadlock invite is two clicks in the game, but the mail lands in your Steam account email and can take hours. Here is the exact flow.
How to Invite Someone to Deadlock: The Sender's Side
If you already have access, sending the invite takes ten seconds: open Deadlock, press Invite your Friends on the start screen in the bottom-right corner, pick the Steam friend, submit. The half that actually causes confusion is on the receiving end — there is no invite code to copy, no link in a DM, and the notification can sit in a Steam bell or an email inbox for hours while both sides assume it broke. Almost every "my invite never arrived" thread goes wrong on the sender's side, so here is both halves.
Deadlock on Steam — the store page's About block still reads, verbatim: "LIMITED ACCESS — Access to Deadlock is currently limited to friend invites via our playtesters." That line is why the sender has to be someone already inside.
The sender flow, exactly as the client does it
- Launch Deadlock and stay on the start screen. The panel lives on the main menu, not inside hero select or the Hideout.
- Find
Invite your Friendsin the bottom-right corner. Search the start screen for that phrase rather than trusting the corner position — Valve relocates menu items between builds, and this is the label the panel ships under. - The panel opens on
Select a Friend from Steam:— your Steam friends list, pulled from Steam rather than from anything inside Deadlock. - Pick the person and submit. Depending on the build the control reads
Submitat the bottom of the panel or shows a per-friendInvitebutton. Same action either way. - You get a status line, not a receipt. Nothing is sent back to you and there is no progress bar. The queue is Steam-side, which is why you cannot chase it.
One optional field is worth knowing. The client's English string set carries an Email: input described as the "best email to reach your friend, but does not need to match the email address of their Steam account". If your friend does not read the address on their Steam account, point them at a different inbox. It changes where the notification lands; it does not create a second invite.
The long-running invite threads on Deadlock's own Steam app hub are blunt about this: "Add me on Steam first. This is mandatory, as Deadlock does not allow invites unless we are friends." A friend request sitting in Pending is not enough — accept each other in Steam first, then send the invite. If your friend is missing from the panel entirely, the client ships an error string for exactly that case: Must select a friend from list.
Where the invite actually shows up on the other side
This is the question the whole cluster of search terms is really asking, and the answer is three places, all on Steam. None of them is a code.
| Where it lands | What the recipient does |
|---|---|
| Steam notification bell (top-right of the Steam client) | Click it, accept the Deadlock playtest invitation from the notification itself |
| Email at the address on their Steam account | Follow the large view-invite button in the mail |
| Steam's Playtest Invites page — store.steampowered.com/account/playtestinvites | The catch-all. If the notification was missed or the mail was filtered, the pending invite is listed here |
That third link is the most useful thing you can send a panicking friend. It is a plain Steam account page, already verified reachable, and a pending invite that never produced a bell still shows up on it. Players on the official Discord forum mirror trace stuck invites back to exactly this page.
A long-standing post in Deadlock's Steam community discussions notes invites were landing in Gmail's spam tab for a whole group of friends at once. Mail filtering that swallows one playtest mail will swallow the next six. Tell your friend to search the whole mailbox, not just the inbox tab.
Once accepted, the game shows up in the Steam library. Nothing about accepting requires the game to be free or on sale — the store page has no price and no purchase option at all as of this writing.
There is no invite code, so stop looking for one
The most-searched phrasing in this cluster is "deadlock invite code not showing up", and it is searching for something that does not exist. The invite threads say it in one line: "This is not a code or key." Access comes from Steam's playtest invite mechanism, which attaches the app to the recipient's account. There is no redeemable string, no key, no link to paste into a browser, no field anywhere that wants a code.
The consequence: anyone selling a Deadlock invite code is selling you nothing. The store page states access is limited to friend invites from playtesters, so the only legitimate path runs through a Steam account that already has it — which is what how to get a Deadlock invite in 2026 walks through for the person receiving your invite.
How long an invite takes: the honest range
Three numbers circulate, and all three describe the same queue from different vantage points.
| Source | What it says |
|---|---|
| The invite panel's own text, as shipped in the client's English strings | "Invites are typically sent out within 1-2 days, but sometimes may take longer." |
| The r/DeadlockTheGame invite megathread | "Deadlock invites are serviced entirely within the steam app. It can take around 20minutes to 3 hours for the invitation to reach you." |
| A long-running invite post on Deadlock's Steam app hub | "The invite usually arrives within a few hours, but it can take anywhere from 10 minutes up to 2 days." |
Read together: Valve's own client sets the ceiling at two days and warns it can run longer. What players report in practice is far faster — tens of minutes to a couple of hours is normal. Community invite pages quoting "one or two hours" describe the typical case, not a guarantee.
So if your friend is twenty minutes in and has seen nothing, nothing is wrong yet. Do not resend. Re-sending queues no second invite; it resolves to nothing or collides with the one already pending.
The four failures players actually post about
| Symptom | What is really happening | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| No bell, no email, hours later | Missed notification or filtered mail — by far the most common report | Send them the Playtest Invites page directly; check the whole mailbox including spam |
| Your button says the person is already invited | A pending invite from you or someone else is unresolved, sometimes weeks old | They must accept or decline it on the Playtest Invites page. Until then nobody can send a new one |
| Your invite fails with a limited-account error | Their Steam account has never had at least $5 USD spent on the wallet or purchases | Not fixable by resending. The account has to buy something or add funds — limited accounts cannot participate even as Steam friends |
| The person never appears in the panel | Not mutual Steam friends, or the request is still pending | Accept the friendship in Steam first, then reopen the panel |
Two more get misdiagnosed constantly. Rejecting the initial invite can strand an account — a player on the Steam community hub reports invites "no longer show up" for them after turning down the first one. Only a different sender can help then. And firing off several inviters at once appears to slow things down: in the Steam threads, people invited by multiple people at once consistently reported the longest waits.
The Steam hub post is explicit: "The Deadlock playtest invite is delivered directly through Steam and does not require clicking on any external links." If someone claiming to help you get in sends a link, asks you to scan a QR code, asks for a login code, or wants remote access to your PC, it is a scam attempt. Close it. Access is free.
FAQ
Do I have to buy Deadlock to invite a friend? No. The Steam store page lists no price and offers no purchase option; access is a playtest invite. Your friend does need a Steam account with at least $5 USD of spend on record — a Steam account rule, not a Deadlock one.
Can I invite someone who is not on my Steam friends list? No. Add them on Steam, have them accept, then send the invite from the start screen panel.
How many friends can I invite? The client shows no cap. The real limit is practical — invite people who will actually play, since a six-player-per-team game with an empty lobby wastes the queue.
I have access but I cannot see the button.
Search the start screen for the phrase Invite your Friends instead of assuming the bottom-right corner is permanent; community trackers warn that Valve relocates menu items between builds.
Should I keep re-sending every few minutes to be safe? No. Re-sending is not a retry mechanism. It either does nothing or collides with the invite already pending on their account — the state that causes "already invited" errors.
Related Guides
- How to Get Deadlock Invite in 2026 (Still Closed) — the other half of this page, for the person with nobody to invite them.
- What Is Deadlock? Valve's 6v6 MOBA Shooter Explained — what your friend is actually saying yes to.
- Deadlock Beginners Guide: Your First Three Matches — send it with the invite so they are not lost in lane one.
- Is Deadlock Worth Playing in 2026? An Honest Take — the honest state of an early-development build.
- Deadlock Crashing or Freezing: Fixes That Work — what goes wrong first on older hardware after they install.
More Deadlock Guides
Valve's Sept 29, 2026 major patch: rebuilt map and four new districts, Haunts replacing neutral camps, The Broker, six voted heroes, HUD and QoL work.
The Broker ran Sept 29 to Oct 2, 2026 and is gone with Rat King's release. What Corrupted items were, what they did, and what to do now.
Startup crashes, random freezes mid-wave, black screens and the access-violation crash - an ordered fix list, cheapest step first.
Haunts replaced neutral camps in the Sept 29 patch. Nine families across roughly 40 camps, three tiers, and the in-game respawn timer added this update.
How many heroes Deadlock has right now, who the 2026 vote rounds added, and how to pick a role instead of memorising a tier chart.
Three lanes, four new Districts between them, and the Haunts that spawn in each. What City Never Sleeps changed about where you fight.
Stamina, dash into slide, slide hop, mantle and wall jump - the movement tech that decides fights, explained as mechanics.
Rat King landed Oct 2. The next five City Never Sleeps heroes drop Tuesdays and Fridays at 2pm PT through Oct 20, in the order players vote.