At E3 2009 Valve caught fans off guard with an announcement for a late 2009 release of Left 4 Dead 2. The original Left 4 Dead (released just last year) was immensely popular in sales upwards of 2 million copies. With a promise of new campaigns, survivors, weapons, and brain-eating zombies in just a few short months, what could go wrong?
Dissent, apparently. For those very few still unaware, a growing group of disenchanted gamers are swearing to boycott the upcoming release on the grounds that Valve did not make good on the company’s promise of continual support for the original Left 4 Dead via downloadable content or expansion packs. Valve does break historical precedent and has a history of conducting business in this fashion that consistently goes all the way back to the original Half-Life.
Read the L4D2 Boycott manifest and decide for yourself. Some parts are more arguable than others. The threat of splitting the community seems especially dubious since annual sequels are the bread and butter of many publishers, most noticeably with the Call of Duty franchise. However, the accusations of breaking favorable and successful trends in extending the life of a beloved game are more at the heart of the boycott.
Has Valve finally turned into a money-grubbing company, or are they just conforming to a more console-centric market? Would the boycotters’ complaints be analogous to say, another group declaring that Valve abandoned the offline community with the original release of L4D? Valve’s post-release support of L4D has been noticeably lighter than with their past games but completely free of charge. Furthermore, they released the Source Software Development Kit for PC owners (also free), which will allow PC users to create their own L4D content.
Whatever the future success of L4D’s sequel, this is just one of many online debates that separates gaming from any other form of entertainment. In this case it happens to be Valve feeling the burn of gamers’ sense of ownership and entitlement to some of their favorite franchises. There's not really an easy answer. Only retrospect will determine if there's any warrant to the endless forum arguments. And by that time nobody will give a damn.
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
The charity event will be streamed live from Gamescom in August.
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
I like it.
As far as Money grubbing. I want to see what happens if say the PS3 starts posting insane sales numbers as many predict. Will valves tune change then? If it does then you know it to be true. As tired as I am of the whole "Valve bias" articles are I think the boycott is actually a very valid point. It will split the community in many ways for PC gamers. Most people never went over that in interviews and such like G4. The crew at Gametrailers said it well in a past episode of invisible walls which was really cool. very informative there.
We'll see what the future holds but for now good blog.
While I do believe Valve jumped the gun a little, with only a year between the two, I do have to say that they never directly said that they would provide tonnes of free DLC. TF2 has frankly spoiled a huge number of PC gamers who now expect Valve to do the same for every game that they release. Valve isn't making any money off the free DLC. TF2 has easily doubled in size content-wise since its release, and how much have they had to pay? Nothing.
Valve have to be some of the laziest devs out there.
And no, I'm not talking about their lack of PS3 support.
They constantly bring out the same games over and over again with minor improvements. Half-life 2 weas great, sure, but then they decided to go the episodic route - but rather than release a new game every few months as with any other episodic game, they take another few years to bring out each game with a new bio-luminescence shader and that's it. Whilst other devs are making vast graphical improvements, gameplay enhancements and new features, Valve decide to release the same games over and over again.
Now I'll admit that I really disliked the original Left 4 Dead, and it's partially because Valve have again been lazy. The single-player is a joke and has had no effort put into it. There is actually very little content there. They've got the same outdated engine with few improvements, the immersion level is very low and the only thing you can reasonably say they've put in that's not generic is the ability to spawn enemies in random locations. Whoopee. Now they want to re-release EXACTLY the same game, with a comic style (which is fitting considering the lame, cheesy nature of the original) and probably another measly selection of levels and generic weapons & gameplay. Lazy devs they are indeed.
I don't understand it. Valve want to make money but is it really wrong or them to capitalize on a market they have created. It's only a matter of time somebody puts out competition to the L4D and Valve might as well strike while the iron is hot.
Clearly they have ideas that couldn't be implemented into the first game because of restrictions to the original or desire to go a different way.
It just seems that everyone is miffed because they are missing out on download content. But download content is only there to extend the life of the game and it's fully justifiable for Valve to want compensation for the hard work. It's not like they are intentionally holding back stuff that should have been in the game in the first place. (Unlike games Street Fighter and Fable, pay extra money for costumes nuts to that)
i wonder if the game was named left 4 Dead 2009 if any of this backlash would be any different. Hell EA have been doing it for years and they still sell craploads.