Welcome

New Year's Eve Update

Flu Season, Mutation Poll, Secondary Weapon, Next Year

Flu Season
The smell of spit and bile in the air.

This Coop Mutation is a mashup of "Boomer Shooter" by SR69MMJC and "Spitters!" by Karma Jockey. The only specials are Boomers and Spitters. The only commons are the result of the Boomer. The only other change is we amped up everything about these two Specials. But don’t worry you’ll be okay as long as you avoid all the goo flying in the air.

Mutation Poll
Last poll asked what game mode should this week’s Mutation support. PC and 360 players voted almost identically. Coop squeaked out a win with 35%, Versus followed with 33%, Survival and Solo tied with 13% each and Scavenge came in last with 6%. This week we will have a Coop Mutation and will look at Versus Mutations for the next one.

Secondary Weapon
While this answer can be situational, in general – what secondary weapon do you prefer? Vote for your favorite using the polling system available inside the in-game blog.

Next Year
We hope everyone has a safe and happy New Year's Eve tonight. Remember, the safest way to spend your New Year's Eve is at home, in the safety of your basement killing zombies. The entire Left 4 Dead team would like to thank everyone for a great 2010 and we are all looking forward to more fun in 2011.

December 17th Update

Special Delivery, The Walking Dead, The Next Mutation

Special Delivery
These Specials deliver non-stop action!

This Mutation is a variation of Hard Eight. Spawn timers have been removed and the Special spawn cap has been raised to ten. The changes sound subtle, but they really mix up the gameplay.

The Walking Dead?
Last poll asked if you were watching the television series The Walking Dead. If it is available in your area - you are. 55% of 360 players and 49% of PC players are watching. 20% of the PC players did not have it available in their area compared to 15% on the 360. This variation matches the geographical makeup of each player base as there is a slightly greater International mix of players on the PC.

Mutation Madness!
With today’s Mutation, we are releasing for the first time for us community created content on the XBOX 360. This is only the first with many more to follow. Some Mutations will be takes on existing ones and some will take us into wild variations. We wanted to start with something familiar and move from there.

It has been great playing all the community Mutations and we can’t wait to release more for everyone to play. With that in mind, while we can see what Mutations are the most popular, the numbers can be misleading. That number only shows us what people play but doesn’t tell us what they want to play. Right now the most popular Mutations are Coop then Versus. But our question to you is what game mode should the next Mutation be? Vote in this week’s poll to let us know.

Holiday Schedule
We will have another update and blog post in two weeks and then we will get back to a regular schedule of a Mutation every two weeks, a featured campaigns on the off week, and more frequent blog posts. For upcoming posts we are going to look at the data we have gathered from our Realism Versus tests, the impact of playing with friends, a look at coop and more.

December 3rd Update

Hard Eight, Do you compete? Mutation Madness, The Road Ahead

Hard Eight!!
Double the specials, quadruple the fun!

Face eight Special Infected at one time, this is double the standard number! And if that wasn’t trouble enough, we also increase the spawning frequency so it is raining Specials.

Why aren’t you going to give it a try? Scared?

Do You Compete?
We asked if you competed in Left 4 Dead 1 or 2 Tournaments. That both platforms tied with Play competitive games but not in tourneys and where am I? is a little scary. Here are the numbers by platform:

Xbox 360
30% Play competitive games but not in tourneys
30% Where am I?
15% No, But I do compete in other games
13% Played in tourneys
12% Don’t play competitive modes

PC
26% Play competitive games but not in tourneys
26% Where am I?
19% Don’t play competitive modes
17% Played in tourneys
12% No, But I do compete in other games

With 13-17% of you responding you do play in Tourneys – which ones? Where? Because that response rate dwarfs the numbers I see in online Tourneys. Do you have a tournament you are running or do you know about one? Let us know! We have been known to kick in prizes and who doesn't want to win one of these?

Mutation Madness!
The next Mutation will be a community created Mutation. We have been talking with Raymond Nondorf about his Mutation mod that he posted in the forums. We are going to be pulling the next Mutation from his mod and then after that the question becomes – can you create a better Mutation? Raymond, not content with just releasing his own Mutations, has also created a tutorial for others to create their own. You can check it out here. Nice work Raymond!

As we continue to update bi-weekly, we will be incorporating some of these community Mutations. To make a Mutation, you will need to build and test your mutation on the PC but we will release them on both PC and Xbox 360. So user created content is beginning to see itself on the Xbox 360!

The Walking Dead
This season's final episode of The Walking Dead is this Sunday. Have you been watching it? Use the in-game poll to let us know.

The Road Ahead
First up, Realism Versus. While the really short respawn interval was interesting, it removed our ability to increase difficulty in other ways. Today's update includes one of those other ways, the uncrownable Witch. Not only is she deadly in Realism but now she is also uncrownable. Good luck with that.

We will have more gameplay changes and bug fixes coming and not just in Realism Versus and Versus.

What else can you expect? We have some longer term projects that we are working on that have been taking our time. The biggest project is working custom content back into the core game on our official dedicated servers. There are complications to how that works and how we insure against cheating, so you will not see the results instantly but we are working on it.

Past that, we should have some news for you early next year (it really isn't that far away) on any new content we might have in the works.

November 19th update

Gib Fest and…, You are Glowing, Do you compete?

Gib Fest
M60s and buckets of blood.

For our coop mutation this week we return to everyone’s favorite Gib Fest. Simple, go play.

Realism Versus
We are also “featuring” Realism Versus. This week we added quicker spawns for the infected. If you haven’t played recently, you are missing out on one of the most intense Left 4 Dead 2 competitive experiences. It is like regular Versus but no health kits in the world, no glows on fellow survivors, harder to kill commons and now faster Special Infected spawns (coming soon to the 360).

Give it a try this week, it's what all the cool kids will be playing.

You are glowing
You liked the idea of changing the Survivor’s glow. The breakdown was roughly 50% for, 30% against, 20% no opinion but I just like to vote. So this week we are changing the glow and also incorporating a suggestion from the forums. The glow color will now correspond to the run speed of the Survivors. This should help tanks know who they can catch.

While we were at it, we added a glow to the Witch for the Infected team.

Sometimes poll results can be incorporated quickly into the game, sometimes they take a bit longer – just a warning for past and future polls. Just because we don’t make a change that week doesn’t mean the results are being ignored. XBOX 360 users will see these changes in future title update.

Do you compete?
Have you ever played in an L4D1 or L4D2 tournament? Let us know in this week's in-game poll.

November 12th update

Taannkk!, The Breakdown, Feature?

Taannkk!!
Everything is coming up Taannkk!!

Scared to play Versus? Think there is too much strategy? Don’t want to embarrass yourself? Give Taannkk!! a try. We simplify everything. What does everyone spawn as? Tanks. What is trying to kill you? Tanks. Why should you keep running? Tanks. You’re welcome.

The Breakdown.
Taannkk! won easily and here is how the rest of the field faired by platform.

XBOX 360
51% Taannkk!!
17% Hunting Party
16% Healing Gnome
10% Lone Gunman
  6% Bleedout Versus

PC
47% Taannkk!!
17% Healing Gnome
16% Hunting Party
12% Lone Gunman
  8% Bleedout Versus

Feature?
You are playing Versus, you see a Survivor in red, you pounce on them! You tear them up for 10 seconds and when you get knocked off they get right up. Seems they had temporary health you didn’t “see”.

So we propose that the Player’s outline should match their current health not their permanent health. So if they have 20 health and take pills we show their glow as green not red. As their health counts down the green would turn to orange then red.

The problem here is if everyone was green, you wouldn’t clearly see who had temporary health or permanent health – most people would rather be eating through someone’s permanent health in this case.

You can always check the scoreboard but this is just for the quick identification you do based on the infected glow. So that leads us to the poll question. Would you rather the glow color reflect permanent health only or reflect permanent and temporary health? Let us know.

November 5th update

Healing Gnome, Halloween?, Pick the Mutation, Tweet Tweet

Healing Gnome
There is only one way to heal, holding the Gnome!

This Coop game is all about the Gnome and his magical healing properties. There is only one way to heal and that is by holding the Gnome. Better share him with your teammates!

Halloween?
If you haven’t checked out the Halloween Costumes on our Facebook pages, what are you waiting for? Hunters, Zoeys, Bills, and even Rochelles are all there to TERRIFY YOU!!! For the poll, the Hunter handily won followed by the Tank. PC players then chose Bill and 360 players chose Ellis.

From a quick headcount in the real world, I think the order was Hunter, Ellis, Zoey, and then Bill. The Tank seemed to be too much for most people’s costume making abilities.

Pick the Mutation.
Pick Next week’s Mutation:
1)Bleedout Versus
2)Healing Gnome
3)Hunting Party
4)Lone Gunman
5)Taaannnkk!

Tweet Tweet
Want to know what the Left 4 Dead development team is working on or thinking about? Follow us on our brand new Twitter account at twitter.com/l4ddev. We promise we will never bore you with what we are eating or … okay, we did have some really good Thai food today. But look, we said that here and not on the twitter account, the twitter account will stay food free. We promise. Most likely.

October 29 Update

Bleed Out Versus, You Rock, Halloween?

Bleed Out Versus
Now you have a good excuse for rushing through Versus.

There is no permanent Survivor health, it is all temporary and it is ticking down. Even if you don’t normally play Versus, this is a great mutation to try. The action is frantic and fast as team wipes are always just a few seconds away.

You Rock!
It didn’t matter on the platform, 38% of you have rocked out with the Midnight Riders in Rock Band. We need to get cracking on converting the rest of the Riders’ catalog.

Are you dressing up for Halloween?
Of course you are, the real question is - are you dressing up as someone from the Left 4 Dead universe? If you do dress up, make sure to post your picture on our Facebook pages. This week’s poll asks who you would dress up as - make sure to vote using the in-game poll.

Still not sure who you want to be, what about just being part of the crowd? If you are going to go as a common infected make sure to check out this tutorial on getting your infected makeup right.

Don’t forget, if you are in Seattle this weekend, the first annual ZomBcon will be in full swing. Look for us Sunday, we’ll be the ones carrying shwag and concept art to hand out at our 12 noon panel.

Next week: Healing Gnome

L4D1 and L4D2 on the Mac

BOOmer!



L4D is on the Mac and more, check out our Halloween page for all the info.

October 22 Update

Lone Gunman, Did you Win, Do you rock?

Lone Gunman
You and your Magnum against the deadly horde and Boomers.
So you have your Magnum pistol and… well you do have your Magnum pistol. You better be counting bullets because four swipes by a common and you are dead. Getting boomed? Forget about it.

Did you win?
Last week we asked - Do you consider that you won the Campaign when you sacrifice yourself to restart the generator or did you just sacrifice yourself so your team won? Is it individual or team glory?

68% of you consider it a team victory and 32% of you believe you lost. For the 32% that either means you never go yourself or you really are a team player. This is one of those questions where we assumed the answer would have been closer to 95% of the people choosing you won. So if you have time, explain your votes in the forums or on our Facebook pages.

Do you rock?
With two Midnight Riders songs on Rock Band, have you ever played any of the Midnight Rider songs?

Next week: Bleed Out Versus

October 15 Update

Hunting Party, Comics Going Mobile, Did you Win?

Hunting Party
Nothing but Hunters on the prowl.
In this Coop Mutation we pit you against non-stop hunters. No booms, no spit, no tongues, no charges, no being ridden… Great practice on dead stopping a hunter pounce.

The Sacrifice comic has gone mobile.
The Sacrifice is now available on the iPhone and iPad.
How do you get it?
Go to the App store on your iphone/ipad.
Download the Comixology app (be sure to get the one that says “Comics” not “Pull List”)
Use the search engine to find Left 4 Dead.
Download for Free! When it is finished, go to bottom of the U.I. and you will find it in “my comics”.
Thanks to everyone at Comixology for getting this up.

We also added a zip file on the comic's extra page that contains all the panels with the words and SFX removed. This way you can create your own story or translate The Sacrifice to a language other than English or just make Zoey say all those things you’ve been hoping she would.

Did you win?
You get to the end of the Sacrifice. You and three friends are on the bridge and someone needs to jump down. You offer to do it yourself, so you jump down, restart the generator and save the team.

Do you consider that you won the Campaign or did you just sacrifice yourself so your team won?

Next week – Lone Gunman

TF2 items

The Sacrifice DLC for Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 is now available on the Xbox 360!

The Sacrifice is out!

We have released the Sacrifice for Left 4 Dead on the PC, for Left 4 Dead 2 on the PC and Mac. It will be released later this evening on the Xbox 360.
We have also released the final issue of the comic for you to read while downloading the DLC.


On Steam Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 have had their prices slashed so low, we needed to ask our favorite Georgia gun store owner to explain the pricing to you. Click here to read his explanation of the current sale prices.