100,000 Love Locks to Cut in Paris: How This Steam Game Will Pay $5,000 Toward Your Divorce or Wedding
Clamping an engraved padlock onto a Parisian bridge railing and tossing the key into the Seine has long been the ultimate tourist cliché, eventually weighing down real-world parapets under tons of brass. Developer Collision Games and publisher Blue Brain Games (the studio behind The House of Da Vinci puzzle series) are turning that romantic tradition into scrap metal with the official Love Locks page on Steam. Launching on December 3, 2026 for PC and macOS, this first-person incremental cleanup game comes with an unforgettable launch challenge: up to $5,000 USD to help pay for the real-life divorce or wedding expenses of the fastest player to clear all 100,000 padlocks.
From Lockpicks and Magnet Fishing to Lasers: Turning 100,000 Romantic Gestures Into Scrap Metal
The premise behind Love Locks is delightfully blunt: love may be priceless, but in Paris, you measure it in kilograms of scrap metal. Whether you play solo or hang out on the bridge with up to four friends online (where each player works through their own lock count and progression side by side), your job is to strip an entire bridge fence clean of 100,000 love locks left behind by starry-eyed couples.
Because those couples threw their keys straight into the river, your cleanup shift starts with a specialized drone fitted with a heavy-duty magnet. Magnet-fishing in the Seine pulls up handfuls of forgotten keys to match with locks on the railing, alongside submerged tools. Every lock you remove adds to your collected metal weight and unlocks heavier hardware: after starting with precision lockpicking that will feel right at home for puzzle fans who tackled our Escape Academy 2 trophy and achievement guide, you scale up through pliers, saws, bolt cutters, angle grinders, blowtorches, and eventually industrial lasers capable of slicing through whole clusters of padlocks at once.
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Once you haul in 100 kilograms of scrap metal, you can recruit an automated colleague called the Expendabot. Players can assign this robotic helper to a specific section of the bridge and upgrade its cutting speed so it clears locks alongside them, all while uncovering humorous relationship flashbacks hidden behind certain declarations of everlasting love.
Up to $5,000 for Divorce Lawyers or Wedding Bills: How the December 3 to 10 Speedrun Contest Works
Arriving just weeks after a packed November schedule where bold indie studios stood their ground against GTA 6, Collision Games and Blue Brain Games are backing the launch with an official speedrun competition running from December 3 to December 10, 2026. The eligible registered player who clears all 100,000 locks with the fastest verified in-game time without cheating will win up to $5,000 USD toward legitimate wedding or divorce bills.
- Official Competition Window: Runs for seven days from December 3 to December 10, 2026 (players can make multiple attempts during launch week, with their fastest verified full run counting toward the leaderboard).
- Eligible Real-Life Expenses Up to $5,000 USD: Covers verified divorce costs such as legal and attorney fees, or wedding expenses including a wedding dress, venue, or ceremony bills.
- Two-Year Redemption Window & Transfer Option: After the winner is verified at the end of the contest, they have two years to submit an eligible bill to Collision Games. If the winner is already happily married or single with no plans to wed, the rules allow them to nominate a friend or family member to receive the payout instead.
My Field Notes
When Collision Games' announcement crossed my late-night desk, I initially assumed the divorce payout was just a cheeky tagline before reading the official competition rules. Offering to bankroll either a wedding dress or a divorce attorney after you spend a week taking an angle grinder to 100,000 symbols of eternal romance in Paris is easily the sharpest, most self-aware indie marketing hook we have seen on Steam this year.
I actually ran the math past Maëlle "Kaelen" over our midnight coffee: clearing 100,000 padlocks within the seven-day contest window requires an average pace of more than 14,285 locks per day, or nearly 600 locks every single hour without sleeping! Rushing the 100 kg threshold to unlock and upgrade the Expendabot alongside the laser cutter will be mandatory,otherwise, anyone grinding that bridge non-stop for a week might genuinely need that $5,000 divorce check for themselves.
Originally from Lyon, France, gaming journalist Bastien "Orion" relocated nearly a decade ago to Quebec City's Saint-Roch district, right in the heart of eastern Canada's development studio hub. Before crossing the Atlantic, he honed his versatile reporting style across classic French gaming web portals and specialist television outlets in the 2000s and 2010s, notably with JeuxVideo.fr and JeuxNews. Equally passionate about AAA blockbusters, North American studio culture, retro preservation, and community modding projects, he anchors Pro-Gamer's transatlantic desk and real-time coverage of US and Japanese industry announcements.
