Valve's September 29 City Never Sleeps announcement and official hero page introduced six new heroes on a player-vote schedule and a temporary item vendor, the Broker. They planned two releases per week on Tuesdays and Fridays at 2:00 p.m. PT, beginning October 2. Valve's later release posts confirm which heroes actually arrived before October 12.

Three heroes were confirmed live by October 9

Valve's news feed says Rat King was available on October 2, Baba on October 6, and Solomon on October 9. By October 12, those were the first three of the six announced heroes with official release posts; the October 9 post described the set as halfway through. It said the next hero was expected Tuesday, October 13 at 2:00 p.m. PDT, still in the future on October 12.

How the vote affects the next release

Voting takes place in the pregame lobby. Valve says votes from the winning team count double, and a player's first win of the day also doubles votes. Playing matches earns priority tokens starting with the first hero release. The page does not say whether the two vote bonuses stack, how many tokens are needed, or guarantee a player can select a specific hero.

The vote sets release order; it does not make all six characters available at once. Campaign posters let players display support for an upcoming hero, but Valve presents those as a way to show preference rather than a separate way to change the order. Valve's October 9 post also asked players to keep voting for the next hero. Check the latest release post to confirm actual availability.

The release posts confirm availability, not vote totals. They do not show how many votes separated the winning hero from the next one, so they cannot support a popularity ranking.

A pregame ballot points to an ordered queue, with NOT ALL AT ONCE beneath it.
Concept diagram of the article's description that votes set release order without making every announced hero available at once.

The Broker was a launch-window vendor

The Broker exchanges high-tier items for corrupted versions. Its first shipment was described as arriving around 30 minutes into a match, with additional items appearing on average every 15 minutes. The timing is approximate, not an exact restock clock.

Each match assigns corrupted items random negative attributes from a predefined set. The positive and negative values can vary slightly, but every player in the same match sees the same attributes for a given item. Read the modifiers before trading: the exchange can add power and a drawback, so it is not automatically an upgrade for every build. Because the modifiers are shared within a match, teammates can compare the same offer before deciding whether anyone should trade.

Valve described the Broker as temporary, saying it would leave when the first new hero arrived. Rat King's October 2 release post confirms that the first hero was available. The source does not give an exact removal time or confirm whether the vendor remains in a current match, so treat the Broker details as launch-window rules and check in-game availability before planning a trade.