60246 In-game now on Steam
I Hate Helicopters
September 29, 2009 - Chet Faliszek
Crash Course DLC is here! Find out what happens to Bill, Zoey, Louis, and Francis after their rooftop helicopter rescue in the No Mercy campaign.
To celebrate the release of our second DLC for Left 4 Dead, we are offering Left 4 Dead for 50% off until Oct 2nd.
More info can be found here.
Left 4 Dead 2 Summer Tour Continues
August 27, 2009 - Chet Faliszek
Next Stop: Penny Arcade Expo
We will be unveiling Dark Carnival at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle September 4-6.
Dark Carnival is the third of five campaigns we have revealed. It is the second campaign of the game and picks up after you have escaped from Savannah.
Besides Dark Carnival, we will be showing Swamp Fever for those who missed it at Comic Con. We have two locations at PAX this year, Microsoft's Xbox 360 booth and Valve's L4D2 booth. Each will be showing a different campaign.
In addition to the campaigns, we will have some new items, weapons and of course a new Uncommon Common. Since PAX is local for us, working the booths will be a mix of Valve developers and support team, so make sure to stop by and say hi.
See you there.
Left 4 Dead 2's Zombies Invade Gametrailers TV at 12:30am on SPIKE!
August 13, 2009 - L4D Team
Get the inside scoop on Left 4 Dead 2, new Left 4 Dead DLC and much, much more tonight on GTTV! Tonight's revealing episode of GameTrailers TV takes viewers inside Valve as we showcase brand new Left 4 Dead 2 footage, including a never-before-seen campaign that's quite literally a carnival of zombie action! We also deliver detailed information and new gameplay footage from Left 4 Dead's upcoming DLC - Crash Course, find out about the future of the Team Fortress 2 short films and the possibility of a TF 2 comic book, and host Geoff Keighley unleashes a flurry of Twitter user-questions on Gabe Newell. Find out about Valve's distance from the PS3, the progress of Half Life 2: Episode 3, Counter-Strike 2, and a whole lot more!
All of that and more is going down tonight at 12:30am ET/PT on Spike and you can catch the show after it airs on GameTrailers.com in glorious HD.
Check out this week's promo: http://www.gametrailers.com/video/episode-220-gametrailers-tv/54082
Left 4 Dead 2 Summer Tour Begins
July 31, 2009 - Andrea Wicklund, Arsenio Navarro and Adrian Finol
First Stop: Comic Con
During the San Diego Comic Con gamers had an opportunity to visit us in our Left 4 Dead 2 room and try out two L4D2 levels from the "Swamp Fever" campaign. The response was overwhelming, with lines going out the door well before we opened. Throughout the four days that the demo was made available, there was never an empty seat.
Thousands of new L4D2 t-shirts were given out to players—some lucky gamers waiting in line even had their zombie portraits drawn by Andrea Wicklund, an artist on the L4D team. We also had an area on the show floor that was visited by NBC's Zachary Levi from Chuck. Zach was well versed in L4D and had no troubles leading his team to safety, even while being attacked by a costumed Smoker.
Thanks to everyone who visited during Comic Con. Next stop will be the Penny-Arcade Expo (PAX) on Sept 4th. If you want an early peek at Left 4 Dead 2, make sure to book your trip to PAX today.
Get your Campaign On
June 19, 2009 - Yasser Malaika
We're pretty excited about this next Left 4 Dead update, and we hope you will be as well. Since the Left 4 Dead Authoring Tools Beta was released several weeks ago, mod authors have been cooking with gas, so to speak. The ranks of dedicated community members working hard to create new content have been swelling, and a very hungry horde awaits...
We've long believed that Left 4 Dead should fully support community content, and we've been hard at work enhancing the UI and matchmaking systems to provide full support for your creations. The latest update, which will be available via Steam next week, is focused on custom campaigns. It introduces several key features:
Add-Ons
Third party campaigns are designed to be installed using a new Add-On framework. Content authors will be able to package up their new maps, along with new posters, models, and textures, into a single .VPK file. To install and activate this content in-game, players need simply download the .VPK and double click on it. Alternatively, they will be able to drop it into a new "addons" folder. The list of installed add-ons will be viewable from a new item on the 'Extras' main menu flyout.
Matchmaking
Because Left 4 Dead is all about sharing, we've re-tooled Left 4 Dead's matchmaking system to provide extensive support for custom add-on campaigns. When creating or searching for a lobby, a new option named "Add-on campaign" will let you select from among the add-on campaigns that you have installed. You can then find games or lobbies as well as create a lobby for that campaign. You can invite your friends, too. If they do not have the campaign installed, they will automatically be offered an option to download it.
We've also made it easier to create lobbies by adding a 'Create Lobby' option directly from the 'Play Online' menu. Once you're ready to go, the new matchmaking system will automatically try to find any dedicated servers nearby that have the custom add-on campaign installed, or you can make your own local server.
Authoring Tools
We're also officially releasing the Authoring tools/SDK. Thanks to all who provided feedback during the open beta, the authoring tools have been updated with a few fixes and several new additions, including:
- The tutorial_standards map has been expanded into a minimal example campaign add-on called 'Dead Line'
- A new command line utility for creating and extracting from .VPK files
- Source files for all the official campaign maps
Have fun!