Valve Responds To Left 4 Dead 2 Boycott
Earlier this week over 15,000 fans formed a Steam community group with the aim to boycott the upcoming Left 4 Dead 2 launch. Left 4 Dead 2 was a surprise announcement at E3 – especially for Valve, a company that tends to take a long time to release a sequel – annoying many fans as they felt that Valve had promised to offer continued support and new content for Left 4 Dead. By releasing a sequel only a year after the first game gamers were starting to feel a bit short changed, as Left 4 Dead doesn’t have a great deal of content and the idea was that more would be added (only the Survival Pack has been released so far). Valve has now responded to these protests.
Speaking to Kotaku Valve founder Gabe Newell defended plans for the sequel, saying that its release would not change plans for the continued support of the first game
“Doing a sequel in one year is new for Valve. But providing ongoing support for our titles after the initial launch isn’t - it has been part of our philosophy since Half-Life was released ten and half years ago,” said Newell.
“We see no reason to change that and will continue to support the over three million customers in the L4D community. Some in the community are concerned that the announcement of L4D2 implied a change in our plans for L4D1. We aren’t changing our plans for L4D1.”
“In addition to the recently released Survival Pack, we are releasing authoring tools for Mod makers, community matchmaking, 4×4 matchmaking, and more new content during the coming months for L4D1,” Newell claimed. “We also agree with our customers that there needs to be an interoperability plan for players of L4D1 and L4D2, as multiplayer games are driven by the cohesiveness of their community.”
While it’s refreshing to hear that Valve will still be supporting Left 4 Dead I still don’t understand why Valve couldn’t have just released Left 4 Dead 2 as an expansion pack instead of a fully fledged game. It’s not looking much different from the first game anyway, so it could have just been a new campaign instead. I understand that Valve need to make money but that can easily be done by charging for new content, just like the Burnout Paradise developers do.
Gabe Newell can justify it all he wants, but I’m still not sold. What’s the point in updating two products that are incredibly similar? I’m willing to bet that Valve stop creating new content for Left 4 Dead a few months after the sequel is released.
Posted on June 11th, 2009 by tom
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Now, what’s the difference between a sequel and, say, an expandalone? I mean really? You could say that this isn’t an expandalone because you can’t, for example, play as the original survivors in the Deep South, but that wouldn’t make sense in the story. Isn’t it better to release software that doesn’t rely on other software, so that anyone can buy it? I found it hard to recommend, say, The Sims 2 because, all in all, it was hundreds of pounds for “the game” when you count all the expansions together.
June 11th, 2009 at 1:56 pmOk, rather than saying ‘expansion pack’ I’ll say downloadable content. Offering it as DLC will mean that those that already own the original game will get some much needed content, while those that don’t own the game can buy it in the knowledge that there’s more content to play with. Since you can pick up Left 4 Dead pretty cheaply these days you’re getting a better deal than you would have if you’d paid full price for the small amount of content that was available on release.
To be honest though the content may have to be free to accomplish this, but a few quid for more content isn’t that bad. It’s certainly better than paying full price for a game that may offer the same amount of content we got with the first game.
The other side of the argument is that the content should have been there in the first place, and we shouldn’t have to pay to get more for it. In this case a sequel might be a good idea, but only if Valve offer at least double the amount of content we got in the original. I’m not willing to pay full price for the same thing we got with the first game, so Valve needs to put more effort into it if they want my money.
June 11th, 2009 at 2:28 pmAlright, I’ve been reading this same story over and over again lately, and nearly always with the same expressed problem. “Why didn’t they just keep adding stuff to the original L4D instead of making a new game?!” Here, even as you point out that they’re saying they’re going to continue expanding L4D you’re still saying it. If the writer is just saying “I paid for a Steam game that’d keep being supported and expanded.” Now they’ve answered that, let it go. However, then we come to this: “It’s not looking much different from the first game anyway, so it could have just been a new campaign instead.”
Are you a programmer? Did you examine the code? Probably not. For one thing I know they’re putting in melee weapons, and more types of weapons, and I believe I heard they’re expanding it so you can have more than one grenade. They’re probably also changing a lot of how the scenery is built up to make it more interactive, and probably all sorts of other things to improve strategic gameplay. To just add this on to the existing game would take 3x as long as making a new game, and still be broken as hell when it hit the market. What’s even better is that half the people say “It looks the same!” and the other half say “It’s too brightly colored(echoes of Diablo 3 pre-whiners).” If you don’t want to buy the game, don’t buy the game. As for your little wager, quantify it and I’ll take you up on it. I’m willing to bet $50 that they’ll still be releasing new content/patches/etc for L4D 2 years from now, the same way they continue with all their other well-loved products. Valve aren’t idiots, they know why people love them and they’re not going to break it.
I for one am glad they’re going to come out with L4D2, and I’ll be one of the first to buy it.
July 13th, 2009 at 4:43 am[…] looks like the Left 4 Dead 2 boycott movement I wrote about back in June has been dealt a major blow as two of the founders recently published a post that raised more than […]
September 10th, 2009 at 3:49 pm