Editing Early Development Build (section)

=== Invitation Process ===
During the alpha an invitation tree system is used to handle access to the game.

When invited, players would receive an email containing details for logging into the game's official forums as well as instructions on how to activate the game via Steam.

Initially, players with access to the game could invite others by manually sending a request to an official address or by submitting recruitment requests on the forums. The initial intention with this system was to gradually expand the player base to allow Deadlock players to play the game with their "usual friend group" so long as they were trusted and could play on U.S. servers.

In the [[Update: May 3, 2024| May 5th, 2024 Update]] the game client was updated with the Recommend A Friend system which involved submitting the invitation recipient's email address, region and a short piece of information about who was being invited. Until additional server regions were added starting with EU servers in the [[Update: June 20, 2024|June 20th, 2024 Update]], only U.S. region requests were accepted though no verification was in place to prevent non-U.S. players from being invited by setting the region falsely.

The Recommend A Friend system was then reworked in the [[Update: June 6, 2024|June 6th, 2024 Update]] to instead utilise Steam. The new system had a recency requirement, meaning that the inviter needed be friends with the invitee for a specific amount of time before sending an invite was allowed and limited accounts could not be invited.

In the June 20th, 2024 Update, the recency requirement was removed due to concerns about inviting friends who weren't initially added as Steam friends as well as additional systems being added allowing the developers to better filter invitations.