Deadlock FPS drop after update: City Never Sleeps, configs and Windows

Deadlock FPS drop after update reports have been coming in since 30 September, after City Never Sleeps, on very different hardware: from a Ryzen 5 3600 with an RTX 3070 to a Ryzen 9 9950X3D with an RTX 5080. Some get a lower average, others keep the same average and stutter in teamfights. Some players say the game runs better than before the patch.

I have been optimizing gaming PCs for more than 15 years, so after this update I went through the reports on Steam and on the official forum, Valve's notes and the changes in popular configs. A config still gives you something, but less than before City Never Sleeps, and it breaks after every big patch. In the threads where someone found the cause, it usually sat outside the game: in the driver, the shader cache, an overlay or Windows itself.

What players report after City Never Sleeps

City Never Sleeps went live on Tuesday 29 September 2026 at 1:25 pm Pacific time, which was already 30 September in Europe. The same day Deadlock broke its concurrent player record: 228,086 people at once according to Beebom. A few hours later Steam got a thread about huge FPS drops after the last update. A few replies from it, quoted as written:

• The thread author: “I have around 140fps, but quite often 1%fps drops to like 20”. He later added that his 1% low drops only when he moves the mouse.
• A player with a Ryzen 9 9950X3D, RTX 5080 and 32 GB of RAM: “I used to get around 220-240 and now it drops to 60 even with the lowest settings”.
• Another player: “i went from stable 80 fps to 50 or 40, on teamfights its even worse”.
• A Ryzen 5 3600 with an RTX 3070, but on Linux Mint: a constant 30 FPS, while the CPU and GPU “never really went above 60% utilization”.
• In the same thread: “for me its running better than ever”.

On the official forum, in the City Never Sleeps bug megathread, someone puts it briefly: “I went from 180 FPS to 40”. In another thread players describe loading that took 15-20 seconds before the update and now takes up to three minutes. One of them fixed it with a graphics driver update and, in his own words, “maybe” clearing the shader cache.

The picture is mixed. The reports come from a vocal part of the player base, on weak and on very strong hardware, and the press is not writing about a performance crisis. Up to 8 October I found no Valve performance fix in the changelogs released after 29 September. The 2, 5 and 6 October patches added and balanced heroes and extended the ranked season; they say nothing about performance. I saw the same pattern after every big update in 2026. After the June patch the forum also filled with stutter threads, and a Valve developer asked players for PerfView captures.

What Valve says about performance in the notes

The patch notes promise the opposite of the reports. In the official notes Valve writes: “Updated engine code to the latest version of Source 2”, “Rendering performance improvements” and “Audio performance improvements”. Character shadows now fall straight down, which according to the notes improves performance and makes enemies easier to track. There is also a new Preview Video Settings option. I see this regularly after big engine changes: on one PC the game speeds up, on another a problem that had been sitting quietly in the system comes out.

Why a config gives you less now than before City Never Sleeps

Deadlock configs change ConVars, the engine variables, through an autoexec or through the gameinfo.gi file. After City Never Sleeps part of those changes stopped doing anything:

• 13 ConVars were removed from the game, including mat_async_shader_load and r_particle_explicit_fetch. Written into a config, they no longer have anything to act on.
• Valve removed some RenderSystem and SceneSystem keys from the stock file, for example GraphicsPipelineLibrary.
• The engine raises values that are too low to its own minimum. lb_dynamic_shadow_resolution_base set to 16 works as 128, lb_ssss_samples 0 as 3, and r_character_decal_resolution 4 as 256.

This data comes from a fix to one of the public configs dated 5 October. Its author also checked the rest: the other 85 tweaks still work. A config still changes something, but the engine now ignores or overrides part of the settings that used to carry the effect.

The second issue is the queue. On 26 March 2026 the game started blocking the queue when the gameinfo.gi file was changed. A day later Valve narrowed the block to seven sections of the file, including Engine2, MaterialSystem2 and RenderSystem, and config authors have not confirmed whether it works in practice today. Players protested on the forum, saying that Valve should optimize the game first and only then block configs. If your config edits gameinfo.gi, check after every big update that you can still get into a match.

The third: configs break after big patches. The ConVar method for the new health bars, according to esports.gg no longer works after City Never Sleeps. Authors of popular configs were shipping fixes within the first week after the patch, so before you look for the cause in the game, check that you have the latest version.

If you installed a config from my guide Deadlock FPS Config step by step or from Deadlock Ranked CFG, check after City Never Sleeps that you have a version released after 29 September and that you are not adding ConVars the game no longer knows. I covered the in-game menu settings separately in the best Deadlock settings for 2026. Menu changes do not block the queue. For a full overview of what else the update changed, see the article on City Never Sleeps.

Where players found the cause of the drops

In the threads where someone actually got their FPS back, the cause sat in the system: in the driver, in Windows or in a program running in the background. A few examples from the official forum. Some predate City Never Sleeps, because the same problem comes back after every big update:

• February 2026: a player with an Nvidia card uninstalled the latest Windows Defender update, cleared the shader cache and raised its size in the driver. He writes that removing that Defender update alone can give around 20-30% more FPS, and describes VRAM usage dropping from about 14 GB in a match to about 4 GB (thread).
• March 2026: FPS dropped after joining a Discord channel, and turning off the Discord overlay brought it back (thread).
• In a thread about frametime spikes when pressing keys and moving the mouse, players point to MSI Afterburner and RTSS (thread). Remember the author of the Steam thread whose 1% lows dropped only when he moved the mouse? That is a similar symptom.
• June 2026: stutter after a patch disappeared after turning off G-Sync in the NVIDIA Control Panel. The author: “Everything was related to G-sync” (thread).

None of these cases had anything to do with a config. The driver, the cache, background programs and Windows settings stay on your PC no matter what Valve changes in the game.

What to check yourself before your next match

These steps are safe and do not touch the game files. Do one at a time, and after each one play the same session in Sandbox or against bots, so you know what worked. If you change five things at once, you will not know which one helped.

Update your graphics driver

After the game moved to a newer version of Source 2, a driver from a few months ago is the first suspect. In the long loading thread, a driver update is exactly what fixed it. Get the latest version from the NVIDIA app, AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition or Intel's website, and pick a clean install if the installer offers one.

Clear the shader cache

After an engine change the old shader cache may not match the new renderer. On an Nvidia card delete the contents of the DXCache and GLCache folders in %LOCALAPPDATA%\NVIDIA. On an AMD card use the Reset Shader Cache option in the AMD Software graphics settings. Steam keeps a separate cache for Deadlock in steamapps\shadercache\1422450. With the default DirectX renderer this folder is often almost empty, so clearing it often changes little. The first matches after clearing may stutter because the game compiles shaders again, so judge the result only after them.

Turn off overlays

Discord, Steam, NVIDIA App, Xbox Game Bar, RTSS: every overlay injects itself into the game process and draws on the image. Turn them all off for one test. If your FPS comes back, turn them on one by one until you find the one that takes it.

Check Windows Defender

Do not uninstall security updates just because it helped someone on a forum. First check whether Defender loads your PC at all during a game. Open Task Manager during a match and see how much CPU the Antimalware Service Executable process takes. If you see a constant load there, or scans start during your gaming hours, you have a lead.

Test the game without G-Sync

G-Sync and FreeSync help in most cases. Sometimes, though, as in the June thread, they are behind the stutter. Turn off G-Sync in the NVIDIA Control Panel for one session and compare. If nothing changes, turn it back on.

When your hardware is the limit

Valve has not published official system requirements, and the game's Steam page still says “TBD”. According to GamesRadar+ Valve says a good amount of work on the core game is still left. So there is no line below which I could tell you that your PC will not cope.

There is a simple test, though. Turn on a performance monitor and play a match. If the GPU runs close to 100% for the whole match and FPS is still low, the GPU is your limit and the system has little to add. If the GPU has clear headroom, like the player with the Ryzen 5 3600 and RTX 3070, and FPS stays flat, the CPU, memory or system is holding the game back and that cause can be found. When a session shows that the hardware is the limit, I say so directly and point to the component.

What we do when the basic steps did not help

The five steps above are public knowledge. If the drops are still there after them, the cause sits deeper: in the BIOS, the power plan, the chipset drivers or the services that have piled up on your system over the years. A config will not fix that, because a config changes the game's settings, not the PC it runs on.

There are a lot of FPS drops after City Never Sleeps, on very different hardware. We fix these cases in a session: we find what is eating frames on your PC and set the system up so Deadlock runs as well as it can on the hardware you already have.

With remote PC optimization we connect to your PC remotely and go through it together, with a measurement in Deadlock before and after. Windows 11 optimization costs 200 PLN, the Advanced package with BIOS, safe OC and network 400 PLN. I do not promise a specific frame count, because the result depends on the hardware we start from.

After City Never Sleeps you are left with concrete facts. Valve writes about better rendering performance, while some players on the same patch lose a large part of their frames, so the problem depends on the specific PC. A config still works, but the engine now ignores or overrides part of its changes, and editing gameinfo.gi can block the queue. In the threads with a solution, the cause was the driver, the shader cache, an overlay or a Windows setting. Start with the five steps from this article and measure each one separately. If FPS still drops, the problem sits deeper in the system or in the hardware.

Frequently asked questions

Has Valve released an FPS fix after City Never Sleeps?

Up to 8 October 2026 I found no performance fix in the changelogs. After 29 September there were the 30 September patch (among other things health bar name options and the ability to rebind Down Dash), the 2 October patch (Rat King), the 5 October patch (hero changes) and the 6 October patch (Baba and the season extension), plus one silent build on 4 October. You can check the latest changes in the changelog on the Deadlock Wiki.

Does a Deadlock FPS config still work after the update?

Partly. 13 ConVars were removed from the game, the engine raises a few values that are too low to its minimum, and the rest works. Check that your config has a version released after 29 September. I covered the installation in the guide Deadlock FPS Config.

Can changes in gameinfo.gi block matchmaking?

It can. Since 27 March 2026 the game checks changes in seven gameinfo.gi sections, including Engine2, MaterialSystem2 and RenderSystem, although config authors have not confirmed whether the block works in practice today. If you cannot get into the queue, restore the original file by verifying the integrity of game files in Steam.

Why does Deadlock take minutes to load after the update?

Players on the official forum report loading of up to three minutes instead of 15-20 seconds. One of them fixed it with a graphics driver update and clearing the shader cache. The first launches after a big patch also take longer, because the game compiles shaders again.

What are the system requirements for Deadlock?

There are no official ones. The game is in closed, invite-only access, and Steam shows “TBD” where the requirements should be. FPS drops after City Never Sleeps are reported both by players with a Ryzen 5 3600 and by players with a Ryzen 9 9950X3D and RTX 5080, so raw hardware power does not explain the problem.

Will PC optimization definitely give me more FPS in Deadlock?

Not for everyone, and not by the same amount. The result depends on the hardware and on what is holding your system back today. We measure FPS in Deadlock before and after the session, and if the hardware is the limit, I tell you directly. Windows 11 optimization costs 200 PLN, the Advanced package 400 PLN.