If you’ve been grinding solo matches in Valve’s new team-based hero shooter and are sick of random queue teammates throwing your win streak, you’re probably looking for how to invite steam friends to Deadlock for more coordinated plays. I’ve spent the last three months testing every multiplayer feature in the game, so I’ve sorted out all the easy workarounds for the most common invite bugs too. You don’t need to mess with weird Steam settings or third-party tools to get your group together, and this guide will walk you through every possible method depending on what platform you’re using.
How to Invite Steam Friends to Deadlock via In-Game Menu
The fastest way to pull your friends into a lobby is right inside the game itself, and you don’t even need to minimize Deadlock to do it. First, make sure you and your friend are both online on Steam, and that you’ve already added each other to your Steam friends list first. The game pulls directly from your Steam contacts, so you won’t see people you haven’t sent or accepted a friend request from.
Once you’re on the main menu, look for the small two-person icon in the top right of the screen to open the social panel. You’ll see three tabs: Friends, Recent Players, and Blocked Users. Navigate to the Friends tab, and you’ll see all your Steam contacts who either own Deadlock or have it wishlisted. Hover over the name of the friend you want to invite, and click the “Invite to Party” button that pops up. They’ll get a Steam notification immediately, and one click will drop them right into your lobby.
That works 90% of the time, but if your friend doesn’t get the notification, you can also send them a direct invite link from the lobby. Once you’ve created a custom lobby or are in a pre-match queue, click the “Share Invite” button at the bottom of the social panel to copy a link you can send via Steam chat or any other messaging app. Note that this link expires after 24 hours, so you don’t have to worry about random strangers joining your games later.
Common Invite Errors and Quick Fixes
Even if you follow all the steps correctly, you might run into weird glitches that stop invites from sending or going through. I’ve run into every single one of these at least once while playing with my own group, so these fixes are all tested and work for most players. You don’t need to reinstall the game or reset your entire Steam account for any of these issues:
- Invite not showing up for your friend: Ask them to open their Steam overlay (default Shift+Tab) and check the “Notifications” tab, as in-game notifications sometimes get blocked if they have full-screen mode enabled. If that still doesn’t work, have them send you a party request instead.
- Friend appears offline even when they’re online: This is a common sync bug between Deadlock and Steam. Restarting the social panel by closing and reopening it usually fixes this, but if not, a quick restart of Deadlock will refresh the connection to Steam’s servers.
- “Failed to send invite” error: This almost always means one of you is running an outdated version of the game. Check for updates on Steam, make sure you both have the latest patch installed, and try again after any updates finish downloading.
If none of these fixes work, double check that your Steam privacy settings allow people to send you game invites. You can find this setting in your Steam profile under “Privacy Settings” > “Game Details”, and make sure the “Allow game invites” option is toggled on for friends. That’s a super common setting people forget about, especially if they’ve adjusted their privacy settings recently.
Inviting Friends Across Different Devices
One of the best parts of Deadlock is that it’s fully cross-play compatible between PC and Steam Deck, so you can play with your friends no matter what device they’re using to run the game. The invite process works exactly the same as it does for PC players, but there are a few small things to keep in mind if you’re playing with someone on a Steam Deck.
Steam Deck users often have their notifications set to silent by default, so if you send an invite and they don’t respond, send them a quick Steam chat message to let them know you sent an invite. They can also access the social panel the same way PC players do, by tapping the two-person icon in the top right of the main menu with their touchscreen or controller.
What if your friend is using a Steam family share account to play Deadlock? Family share accounts work for party invites as long as the original account owner hasn’t restricted access to multiplayer features. The only catch is that you can’t join a lobby if the original account owner is already playing Deadlock on another device, since family share only allows one person to play a game at a time.
Extra Tips for Smooth Multiplayer Sessions With Friends
Once you get your group into a lobby together, there are a few small tweaks you can make to avoid issues mid-match and make your games more fun. I always adjust these settings before I queue with my regular group, and they’ve cut down on our disconnections and in-game headaches a ton.
First, make sure everyone in your party has their voice chat settings configured correctly before you queue for a match. You can access voice settings by clicking the gear icon in the top right of the main menu, then navigating to the Audio tab. I recommend setting your voice chat to “Push to Talk” if you’re playing in a loud space, to avoid background noise disrupting your team’s communication.
You can also assign party roles before you queue, so you don’t waste time arguing over who plays what hero once you get to the pick screen. The lobby leader can type roles into the lobby chat, or you can use the pre-made role tags in the social panel to mark who is playing tank, damage, or support ahead of time. This cuts down on pick phase time by almost half, in my experience.
If you’re planning to play multiple matches in a row, you can lock your party so no random people can join between games. Just click the lock icon next to your party name in the social panel, and only people you send invites to will be able to join. This is especially useful if you’re playing ranked mode and don’t want random players jumping into your party by accident. You can also set a custom lobby password for private scrims or practice matches with your group, to keep uninvited players out entirely.
At the end of the day, playing Deadlock with friends is way more fun than grinding solo, and once you know how to invite steam friends to Deadlock, you can skip all the frustration of random queue teammates. Most invite issues are super easy to fix with the quick workarounds we covered, and you don’t need any technical skills to get your group set up for your next match. Next time you log on, grab a few friends, test out these steps, and see how much more coordinated your wins are when you’re playing with people you know.