A clash between two widely used PC games has drawn attention after community reports linked Riot Games’ Vanguard anti-cheat to problems opening Deadlock through Steam. The issue is not just an in-game crash; it is the way the anti-cheat appears to lock the game’s executable and block normal repair steps afterward.
The reports have become notable because they affect players who keep Valorant and Deadlock on the same device. Once the problem appears, Steam may be unable to touch the affected files, leaving players stuck even after trying the usual reinstall process.
How the problem surfaced
The first warning signs came from a Reddit user, Akita_Attribute, in the DeadlockTheGame subreddit. That player said Vanguard interfered while Deadlock was running and caused a disruption on Valve’s shooter.
According to the report, Deadlock crashed first, and the main executable was then left locked by the anti-cheat system. From that point on, launching or repairing the game became difficult because Steam could not access the file that needed to be modified.
Why Steam repair starts failing
The complication does not stop at the crash itself. Some players reportedly saw Steam freeze at “Content Downloading” with progress stuck at zero percent, which suggested the client could not proceed normally.
When reinstalling was attempted, the process was said to fail again near the finish line. In those cases, Steam reportedly displayed the message “Content File Locked” at 99 percent, showing that the problem was tied to file access rather than a standard installation error.
The service behind the lock
Akita_Attribute said the source of the blockage was Vanguard’s service, vgc.exe. The service was reportedly holding the Deadlock executable in place, which prevented Steam from replacing or repairing the file.
That detail helps explain why simple fixes were not enough. If the anti-cheat process remains active, Steam cannot overwrite the locked executable, so both repair and reinstall attempts can run into the same wall.
Why this matters for players with both games installed
The case stands out because it involves two competitive games from different companies. Deadlock is Valve’s hero shooter, while Vanguard is Riot Games’ anti-cheat layer used for Valorant.
For players, the impact is more than a temporary crash. A game that will not reopen and cannot be repaired through Steam creates a much larger interruption, especially when the real cause is a background service rather than obvious file corruption.
A temporary workaround, not a permanent fix
The same community report also described a manual way to restore access to the Deadlock files. Stopping the VGC service was said to release the lock on the executable, after which Steam could continue the repair or reinstall process.
Even so, that is only a workaround. It may help recover access after the problem appears, but it does not guarantee the same conflict will not happen again later.
Players who run both titles on one machine may want to watch for a familiar pattern: a Deadlock crash, Steam stuck at “Content Downloading” at zero percent, a reinstall that stops at 99 percent, and the “Content File Locked” error. Taken together, those signs point to Vanguard as the likely process keeping Deadlock’s file out of Steam’s reach.
