As of this posting, 13,160 Steam members have joined the Steam group L4D2 Boycott. The boycott is in response to the recent announcement of sequel Left 4 Dead 2, if you didn't catch that. Developer Valve has always had a reputation for delivering quality content at the gamers' highest benefit, sometimes even giving content for free; now, it seems they are shattering their image, and fans are confused and upset.

Read The Full Article: 13,000 Left 4 Dead Fans Boycott Valve

November is a long ways away, and are these people serious about this? What a joke, L4D has been out for a while yet, they should be more appreciative of a great new game coming up. Its not like they cant still play fucking L4D and still play L4D2... they just need something to bitch about.

Yeah, I dont get this at all. I know that if they announced the sequel to a game I enjoyed I'd be jumping for joy.

Sometimes, people have to learn the hard way. Most of the time, it doesn't pay to buy a game the day it comes out and at full price. It's a hard discipline to follow, and I'm not always perfect at doing it myself, but there are good reasons to wait a while before getting a game, and now it looks like 13,000 idiots are learning this lesson.

However, for us frugal gamers who know better, we can now see a hit online game drop in price. If anyone is keeping score - that's a score for the average Joe gamer, and sour grapes for the 1337 gits.

So many people complain that Valve takes forever to release a sequel. The one time they release a timely sequel, everyone bitches.

Now I'm holding off jumping on the hate wagon (as Valve has done most thing right by me). And I have faith Valve will add enough things to warrant a sequel (as opposed to just new maps / melee)

But for you first 2 posters (OP included). Tell me what consumers are supposed to do after hearing about all this awesome support they'll get for their game post-release

http://www.videogamer.com/news/valve_de ... plans.html

Technically, they are releasing new maps, weapons & more in the form of a sequel...

I don't think people are realizing that these companies are in business for one thing: to make money. They need to keep making money in order to churn out games in the future, so we, as consumers, need to shut it and let them run their business. I'd rather have a dilution of good franchises than NO company to release them!

There's a big difference between a $10 piece of DLC and a $50 dollar full priced game. Plus they had already promised that we would see DLC in the form of campaigns, etc - which some people probably made purchasing decisions on.

That being said, I don't see anything particularly WRONG with what Valve is doing, afterall it's a business.

I'm not quite sure WHAT this has to do with your political views and or free speech. Politics is rarely black and white, and the media especially never reports it as that. We read what we want to read from it and only understand what makes us feel justified in our views.

A petition to not play a game is quite a bit different than a rally against the government.

You know, I was figuring that Valve would release new levels for this game. The 4 campaigns were a good start, but really, needed more than 4. Adding survival wsa a good thing, and adding versus to 2 more of the 4 campaigsn were good starts.

In the past, I have given Valve a pass at fewer levels, and less content, because I knew they would add updates.

While I am annoyed that they are aiming at a new, FULL PRICED game already, I can see that it IS an entirely new game. I just feel like it is too soon.

I'm sure Valve has their reasons, most of them money oriented, and they've got to do what they have to do to compete with other game titles and companies.

Frankly, I think these are just uber-obsessive fanboys over-reacting. Games have been known to be delayed (Cough-Cough! Borderlands, Ghostbusters, Aliens: Colonial Marines, etc, cough, cough!) so there's no guarantee that the sequel will actually come out in November at this time. Announcing the sequel at the biggest convention for gamers is a better PR move than to announce stuff the fans already knew was coming -or nothing at all.

Besides, the summer is just getting started. There's plenty of time for the expansions & DLC for Left 4 Dead to hit the market and for the fans to get burned out on it long before the sequel comes out.

Politics plays into everything humans do. It's naive to think otherwise, and I'm sure Van Lingo's intentions were to point out the anti-capitalism element to this boycott that prevails in many of the younger gamers today.

And to answer Jackal's question, consumers can do with their money as they see fit, at least for now. If a consumer is angry over this, then they can choose not to biy the next game. If enough consumers don't buy Valve products this November, then Valve has learned their mistake as their competition benefits.

BUT - if Valve profits, then they can drive other companies to crank out their sequels faster.

As a consumer, I already advocate not buying a game on it's release day (or Pre-ordering) as a good way to keep the price of gaming down. I never buy single player games at new price, and I heavily screen multiplayer games ( for quality and who's playing them) before buying them on their release WEEK! Very few do I buy new.

I hate to admit it, but I'm honestly not that bothered by it... I'm pretty sure that they were pressured/encouraged into getting L4D out for the 2008 Holiday Rush (by EA or Microsoft, or maybe even their own critical financial reasons) and it probably didn't include everything that they wanted it to. Rather than DLC, DLC, and DLC to get everything where they wanted it to, they are releasing another one a year later. For all that we know, there could be additional reasons why the new stuff being added isn't DLC worthy. For example, if the cost (to them) to put the DLC on there (obviously, if they were to do the DLC for the L4D2 stuff, it wouldn't be for everything that's on there, just a couple of maps) would necessitate them to charge $20 for it (I'm not sure exactly how MS's DLC cost structure is, but I've heard it's not the most favorable; even patches supposedly can be a big headache...) and still make minimal profit, then maybe it would make much more business sense for them to release a new game, so they can make a little more profit, but also give the customers more value for their money.

Lastly, unless I'm mistaken, Valve doesn't have a history of doing this, but they do have a history of making excellent games. So, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt this time...

"Do gamers really feel cheating or misled by Valve? Or is this a knee-jerk reaction to the loss of the last great developer of free, high-quality, post-release content?"

DLC was promised in the form of weapons and campaigns. With the forthcoming sequel, it seems much less likely that L4D will get any of it.

What's worse is that the SDK is still in beta! The modding community hasn't even taken off yet and there will be a sequel to potentially disorganize all of their efforts.

I don't care that they're releasing a sequel, I just want them to deliver on their promises.

You're right, Nick, that was not appropriate. I'll leave the politics to Twitter.

I know I won't be buying Left 4 Dead as the two games I'll buy this year have already been marked and now must past the release phase as WildCard says.

Not to mention, I'll still have L4D to play I don't need another.

But I agree with the group's views. I bought Left 4 Dead on the basis that new content was coming (I'm starting to feel like a sucker for DLC promises). But the biggest sell for me was the demo and the fact that I had Co-optimus to feed me players for co-op

A company should not "crank out" sequels. I don't even think Madden needs to be released every year, just stat updates & some DLC would suffice.

A game works only because the developers took the time to craft the experience. If a one-hit wonder group (not Valve) decides they want to re-create the sequel as soon as possible, they may lose what made the first game unique.

But that's a different topic.

Off-topic: txshurricane, I must have missed the political chat hopefully you weren't rallying against Valve for Iron Sights

I think if they had stayed away from calling it L4D2 they might be in a better position.

I am looking forward to it, I mean yea DLC for L4D would be awesome and who knows they might still put stuff out for it November is awhile off so who knows what will happen.

I think this is one of those Damned if you do Damned if you don't type situations.

Couldn't agree more.

I understand why people are upset, but since I was able to get L4D discounted, I already feel that I've got my money's worth out of it. Hopefully I can snag L4D2 at a special discounted price as well when it's released. It is dissapointng that there will be no official DLC for L4D(1), but hopefully there will be some decent user-created content that will keep me happy until L4D2.

It is a bit of knee-jerk reaction, but that doesn't really matter. 13,000 people are upset by this enough that they don't intend to buy the sequel. And those are just the most hardcore about it. I never really complain when a game doesn't live up to what I expect from it, or what it claims to be, but I become much less likely to buy a game from that developer in the future.