You might remember Slork. He featured in a PC Gamer article with the headline "Slork," and the strapline, "Slork." Everyone had a good time slorkin' it back then, and the unfinished hero quickly turned heads with his ridiculous name and experimental, stealthy playstyle. That being said, I have bad news, #SlorkNation: Valve has melted Slork's wet, slippery body into Sunday dinner.

Let me back up. Slork was a hero concept first accessible via console commands in Deadlock's private test. He was later added to the hero labs, a feature where characters with placeholder art could be used to queue up for normal games during scheduled hours, assuming you had a certain number of games under your belt. At this point, Slork had been renamed to the decidedly less hilarious Fathom.

Deadlock has spent the last year shifting forms like the MOBA version of an Animorph, and the hero labs mode was removed as the game became increasingly polished and all play was subsumed into a single ranked queue. Four of the eight hero labs characters were added to Deadlock's core roster permanently. The others, including Fathom, were simply removed.

That brings us to now, a moment wherein the Deadlock community is in a stir over the next major update. Various leaks and rumors have surfaced all over social media about the next several heroes, but Slork fans have noticed Slork's absence from these rumors.

When asked about Slork's status on the Deadlock discord, developer Duncan "Hopoo" Drummond(yes, the same Hopoo of Risk of Rain fame, he works on Deadlock now) gave a grisly reply: "We made a delicious stock out of his bones and meats." The reply was shared in a Reddit thread from user ginger6616 titled, "They’re laughing… they murdered my boy and they’re laughing."

When Hopoo was informed he was being cruel, he doubled down: "7 hours," came the cooking instruction for Slork's now-extinct bones and meats. He quickly added that this was not a release window for the patch, just a cold acknowledgment that Slork was stewed for the better part of a day.

Suffice it to say, if you've been waiting to see Slork (or Fathom) make it into Deadlock proper, it's never been more over for you. He's gone; you have my condolences.