Gamers are a fickle bunch. Had Valve announced Left 4 Dead 2 in 2010 or 2011, fans would have been falling over each other in desperation to get their hands on it. In 2009, however, the Left 4 Dead 2 announcement has been treated almost as though Valve just relieved itself on the barbeque. As the number of complainers grows, Valve has been forced to publicly defend its controversial decision.
Although not everyone was left distraught by the idea of a new Left 4 Dead, some 19,000 (at the time of writing) Steam members have joined a new group petitioning Valve, promising to boycott the game unless Valve sticks to its original commitments to the first Left 4 Dead.
Valve’s Chet Faliszek has attempted to assuage any fears that the original Left 4 Dead will be abandoned once the sequel launches, and also to assure fans that the decision to make Left 4 Dead 2 was not due to financial considerations.
In fact, it was more a matter of the planned upgrades being too big for an update. Faliszek explained that the team reached the decision based on how many changes they had in mind: “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.”
He also confirmed that all the updates promised for the original are still very much on their way. “We still have updates coming,” he told Videogamer.com. “Our focus is always on what we’re putting in the box, put as much as we can in the box.”
Hopefully these statements will help ease the unrest within the Steam community. However, the sheer speed at which Left 4 Dead 2 has been announced – it aims to launch just a year after Left 4 Dead – is still unsettling. There still seems to be an inherent danger that either the sequel will lose out from being too rushed, or the original will lose out from having resources diverted to the new game.
Out 17 Nov | £TBA | Valve (via VideoGamer)
