Deadlock’s Doorman Exploit Ban Appeal Turned A Rem Corridors Bug Into A Playtest Ethics Fight

On April 10, 2026, a Deadlock forum user turned a Doorman bug report into an enforcement argument. In a thread titled “Bug report follow-up: Doorman exploit in Rem’s Corridors resulted in ban,” the poster said they had been banned for abusing a Doorman interaction that could push players into Rem’s Corridors or unreachable geometry.

The poster’s defense was not that they never used the mechanic. They explicitly said they were not denying that part. Their argument was that the same issue had already been reported publicly, that it remained visible for weeks, and that a known, unfixed bug should have been patched or clearly declared bannable before players were punished for it.

That is where the story gets interesting, because the thread has receipts and holes at the same time.

The linked original report is real. On January 27, 2026, the same user posted that teammates were getting stuck in textures after a Doorman/Rem Corridors interaction, that unstuck did not work, and that players had to use the kill command after sitting trapped. That is a legitimate bug-report spine.

But the math in the later appeal was sloppy. The player framed the issue as reported “nearly 6 months” earlier, while January 27 to April 10 is closer to ten and a half weeks. Forum users immediately pounced on that, because once a ban appeal starts stretching the timeline, every other claim gets less oxygen.

The better argument did not need the exaggeration. Deadlock’s own forum has multiple public Doorman out-of-bounds reports. A March 16 thread called “[GAME BREAKING] The ‘Lore Accurate’ Doorman Exploit” described a bug hunter finding Doorman phasing and out-of-bounds behavior, then said they were banned while testing it in public matches. A February 14 report claimed Doorman could place doors out of bounds near objectives and Patrons. A February 4 softlock report described players being trapped in an unreachable room with no clean way out.

None of that makes exploit abuse harmless. If a player is using a known bug to trap opponents until they lose time, die, or take penalties, the “I was playtesting” defense gets thin fast. The April 10 thread’s harshest replies basically made that point: this is an invite-only test, but it is still a live match for the people being forced into the wall.

That is the nasty little line Deadlock has to draw. Public tests need bug hunters. Competitive queues also need people to stop treating public lobbies like a private QA sandbox with victims. A bug can be real, reported, and still bannable to abuse. A ban can be understandable and still feel arbitrary if the rule is invisible until the punishment lands.

The forum fight became less about one Doorman player and more about whether Deadlock has a clear exploit policy that players can actually see. Is testing a movement bug in a live match always bannable? Does reporting it first matter? Is a permanent ban the right response, or should exploit severity and repetition decide the penalty? The visible thread does not show a public Valve answer.

That silence is why the story keeps breathing. Doorman has been one of Deadlock’s funniest design ideas and one of its messiest geometry problems. The more his doors create out-of-bounds cases, softlocks, and ban appeals, the more the community will argue about whether Valve’s real problem is exploiters, unfixed bugs, or a playtest rulebook that players only discover after they get turned into a cautionary tale.

The boring answer is probably the right one: fix the bug, say what the rule is, and stop letting “reported” and “abused” live in the same gray hallway. Until then, every Doorman exploit appeal is going to sound like both a confession and a complaint.