Deadlock’s new matchmaking algorithm was recommended to Valve by AI: “I found it using ChatGPT”

A Valve engineer cracked Deadlock’s new matchmaking algorithm after it was suggested to him in an interaction with the AI software ChatGPT.

First spotted by PC Gamer, veteran Valve engineer Fletcher Dunn shared on Twitter that he’s been using ChatGPT, essentially, as an advanced search engine. Dunn revealed that Valve changed its in-beta online MOBA/hero shooter hybrid Deadlock’s matchmaking algorithm a few days ago after he asked ChatGPT to recommend him a new one. 

“I’m gonna keep posting my ChatGPT wins, because this thing keeps blowing my mind, and I think there are some skeptics who don’t get how amazing this tool is,” he wrote. “A few days ago we switched Deadlock’s matchmaking hero selection to the Hungarian algorithm. I found it using ChatGPT.”

All of the depressing implications of AI aside, there’s no denying the complexity and nuance of its response to Dunn’s question in this instance. Dunn asked the software to find him “a bipartite matching algorithm where one side expressed preferences in terms of a score,” and well, it found one, and it’s in Deadlock now.

“‘Find me this thing that I don’t really know the right search terms for, but I will attempt to describe’ is just a *killer* app,” he said in response to a commenter. “If it is wrong or hallucinates (which does sometimes happen), you’ll figure that out pretty quickly.”

Could Dunn have found the solution to his matchmaking woes with good ol’ Google Search? Probably, as he acknowledged in a follow-up tweet, but he would’ve had to come up with the right Google search terms instead of simply asking ChatGPT in normal, everyday (for game engineers) language.

“If you nitpick how I described the problem, or say I could also find this using Google search by entering the right search terms: you are missing the point, which is that on my very first crude attempt, it understood what I was trying to say and took me instantly to the answer,” he said.

As PC Gamer pointed out, Dunn recently predicted we’re in a “ChatGPT golden age” and that we’ll look back on its usefulness five years from now “fondly.” “Sort of like how we look back on the golden age of Google search, when it was actually useful,” he said in a September 8 tweet. “Before SEO and bots won the war, and everything became ads, click-bait, fake forums, etc.”

Meanwhile, EA execs say generative AI is “not merely a buzzword for us, it’s the very core of our business,” then pretend to tell a computer to generate buildings live on stage.