Left 4 Dead 1 DLC Announcement Coming Shortly, Sequel's Pre-orders Double Those of Original

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Though Left 4 Dead 2 is slated to arrive on PC and Xbox 360 come November 17, developer Valve has reaffirmed that it will continue to support the original edition of its cooperative zombie shooter with as-yet-unspecified downloadable content.

"More info will be coming shortly on the [Left 4 Dead 1] DLC," Valve's Chet Faliszek told Shacknews, adding that the DLC will come in addition to enhancements, such as the promised team-based matchmaking update for the first Left 4 Dead.

"We plan to keep supporting Left 4 Dead 1," Valve marketing VP Doug Lombardi recently told CVG. "I think folks took our [E3] announcement [of Left 4 Dead 2] as a sign that we were dropping Left 4 Dead 1 and that's just not the case."

Lombardi noted that "there will be some announcements coming before summer's out about what's coming there," explaining that the internet's vocal opposition to Left 4 Dead 2 and the subsequent boycott "really didn't change our plans at all."

Despite that backlash and 37,335-member strong boycott against Left 4 Dead 2, Lombardi informed Eurogamer that "pre-orders are currently double what they were for Left 4 Dead 1 at this point in time away from launch."

"Once everything's been out for a while and everyone's had time to see the complete product of Left 4 Dead 2 and see continued support for Left 4 Dead 1, they may sort of see what we were up to and what the method of our madness was there," he told CVG.

Valve is "still looking at other ways to make the [Left 4 Dead] community cohesive in an elegant fashion," with the recent L4D mod tools allowing user-created content to be played in both PC releases, but hasn't "nailed down all the final details on that just yet."

The studio further confirmed plans to provide a pre-release multiplayer demo of Left 4 Dead 2, much like it did with the PC and Xbox 360 original. "With Left 4 Dead in particular we've found that word of mouth really is the strongest thing," Lombardi told OXM. "With Left 4 Dead 2 we plan to do a demo before the game comes out that'll have multiplayer in it. And hopefully we can continue the free weekends with the full game post-launch."

Chris Faylor was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

From The Chatty
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    July 3, 2009 10:29 AM

    [deleted]

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      July 3, 2009 10:36 AM

      I still play but I don't play VS. If you're a noob like me you get voted out so I never learn how to play as the infected. It's a vicious circle which makes me wish they had sp mode for VS.

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        July 3, 2009 10:44 AM

        I've had the same problem so I'm stuck to trying to master expert campaigns and survival, but I still love the game.

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        July 3, 2009 10:57 AM

        Yeah same here, awful at VS, so I just stick to Survival.

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        July 3, 2009 1:16 PM

        I still play every other night or so, and never have a prob filling a game of people I know aren't idiots.
        It's still a blast really, the versus hasn't gotten old for me yet.

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      July 3, 2009 10:42 AM

      I play pretty much every other night.

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      July 3, 2009 10:51 AM

      the l4d2 announcement took a lot of wind out of the sails

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        July 3, 2009 12:34 PM

        Very good point. I would like to see the time caparisons people had playing before/after the announcement.

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      July 3, 2009 11:32 AM

      TrickSh0t! -- look for the name, baby. Got a long friends list of peeps that play regularly. Join in.

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      July 3, 2009 12:13 PM

      Unfortunately the shack servers are almost always empty. Maybe with the exception of the VS server. But luckily I found a number of friends that still play regularly.

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      July 3, 2009 12:17 PM

      I'm playing every night/every other night with friends, if u cant find anyone to play with you can always play with us, leave a messasge in forums http://www.crazyandinsane.com/vb

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      July 3, 2009 1:00 PM

      Are you guys talking about the PC or 360 because there's plenty of people on the 360.

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      July 3, 2009 2:38 PM

      Not my problem you don't know how to turn on the interwebs. 1,000s of peeps playing L4D any hour of the day. You only need to team up with 3 to 7 of them. If you are referring to your friends as the "nobody's" whose playin anymore then make more friends of peeps still playing.

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