14 DAY TRIAL // Left 4 Dead was one of the most popular titles last year, thanks to its cohesive experience, great single and multiplayer modes and the top-notch compatibility with the platforms for which it was released. As such, it won over a lot of fans and is still a best-seller these days.
But as Valve announced last week, a sequel for the game, Left 4 Dead 2, will appear at the end of the year, introducing many new things such as five new campaigns, new playable characters, melee weapons and enemies, and, most importantly, a new version of the AI director, which will make things ever more challenging for users.
But even though this is a whole lot of content, many users have formed a boycott group on Valve's Steam service, in which they say that the company abandoned the first game and didn't even care about it and its players since it went to work on the second title.
Not so, says Valve's Chet Faliszek, who talked with VideoGamer in response to the claims of the users. He said that the game was too big to be a DLC and that the original game would still be supported for a long time by the development team, which balanced both the title and the upcoming sequel.
“It was just like, OK, this is big enough that this isn’t DLC, we’re not going to be able to leak it out. It’s a cohesive, single thing. It’s Left 4 Dead 2. In fact Left 4 Dead one, we still aren’t done with it,” he said. “We still have updates coming. Our focus is always on what we’re putting in the box, put as much as we can in the box. Let’s not worry about: let’s save that and not put that in the game. No, let’s put that in. And with the five campaigns, all of them out of the box, playable Versus, co-op, Survival and the new mode, there’s just a ton of content in there.”
The developer was then asked if the franchise could become an annually updated one, like Call of Duty or the sports simulators from EA Sports. He replied saying, “We do it once in a year and everyone’s like, oh my God! Let’s do this one. Let’s worry about this and then we’ll see.”
Hopefully Faliszek's statements will make Steam users much calmer and get them to see just what Valve is trying to do here, in order to improve the overall zombie shooter experience.