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

Also, look for a new tutorial on how to package up your campaigns into add-ons on the Developer Community wiki.

Have fun!

Rules of Thumb

June 15, 2009 - L4D Team

When it came time to photograph the box art of L4D1, our art staff had three goals. One, there should be a hand in it somehow. Two, the hand should have a thumb bitten off, so customers would look at the four fingers remaining on the hand and think, "Hey, four." Three, under no circumstances would we use Photoshop. L4D is a visceral experience, and its box art deserved the same approach. Valve artist and L4D1 hand model Andrea Wicklund was more than happy to help.



Sadly, the ESRB got wind of this, and cited some fake-sounding legal loophole about it being illegal to take pictures of people biting off parts of their hands. So for L4D2, Andrea used state-of-the-art eye-tricking techniques (tucking two of her fingers behind her hand) to create the illusion that her fingers were missing:



We're sure you'll agree: Pretty convincing. Granted, it took lopping the fingers off two staff members' hands to get the lighting reference perfect, but since those didn't appear on the box, we think we're legally in the clear.

Announcing Left 4 Dead 2!

June 1, 2009 - L4D Team

We've just announced that Left 4 Dead 2 is coming later this year! It's a much larger game than the original, and features new co-op and versus campaigns, all-new Survivors, boss zombies, weapons, and items, as well as melee combat. Check out the teaser trailer, and watch this space for more news in the coming days.

Now Hiring!

May 19, 2009 - Zoid

It's been an interesting week for us here on the Left 4 Dead team. This Monday, for instance, somebody accidentally told Robin Walker he had the power to fire people. In other interesting news, the Left 4 Dead team has all been fired.

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A Subtle Hint

May 19, 2009 - L4D Team

The 27th Annual Golden Joystick Awards are now accepting votes for your favorite game of the year. Now, we'd of course never for a second want to sway your vote and suggest you follow this link and vote for Left 4 Dead. We're above that sort of thing.
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Personalize your apocalypse

May 15, 2009 - Yasser Malaika

Today we are opening the beta of the Left 4 Dead Authoring Tools to the public. It is available as a free download for all owners of the PC version of Left 4 Dead, and can be found under the "Tools" tab in Steam.

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Left 4 Dead, by the Numbers

April 30, 2009 - Charlie Burgin

Valve has always seen the value in gathering real-world gameplay data and using it to improve our products. Now we're hoping you'll find it as useful as we do. With the creation of the L4D stats page, our customers will now be able to see a wide variety of gameplay data across all of Left 4 Dead's various game modes.

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DLC Released! New L4D swag at The Valve Store.

April 22, 2009 - L4D Team

We just released the DLC on the PC and 360. This includes the new Survival Mode, The Lighthouse Survival map, and 2 new Versus campaigns. To celebrate the release of the DLC we have cooked up a few items for the Valve Store.

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Surviving the L4D Survival Pack

April 16, 2009 - Kerry Davis and Scott Dalton

Survival Mode pits your team against never ending waves of infected. Sounds simple. Just trap the survivors in a small part of a map, unleash the hordes, and record the longest time. Survival Mode, which will be released next week, is actually a bit more than that.
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Lose the Thumb: Creating Left 4 Dead's Box Art

April 9, 2009 - Jeremy Bennett

Hello. My name is Jeremy Bennett, and I'm an artist at Valve. Most gamers only ever get to see the finished product of a game cover, so we thought some of you might find it interesting to hear the process that led to Left 4 Dead's final art. As you'll see, there were quite a few attempts along the way, all of them eventually abandoned.
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A Match Made In Zombie Heaven

April 1, 2009 - Zoid

In a recent update for L4D on the PC, we provided the option for players to choose between starting a game on an Official server or the Best Available. This is just the first step in giving players control over what servers they play on and the type of experience they have.

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Building a Better Apocalypse

March 25, 2009 - Chet Faliszek

We recently updated the PC version of Left 4 Dead with some exploit fixes and Versus balancing. We are going to be releasing another small update shortly that contains some server issue fixes and one small, but very large, gameplay adjustment. We have made a change to the melee mechanic in Versus and the soon-to-be-released Survival Mode.
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Game of the Year

January 8, 2009 - L4D Team

With 2008 behind us, the gaming press has once again sorted through the year's releases and made up their annual lists for Game of the Year. Find out how Left 4 Dead ranks with IGN, GameSpot, GameSpy, 1UP, Onion AV Club, Destructoid, Kotaku, Team XBOX and more by clicking here.
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L4D Art Direction, Part 2: Stylized Darkness

January 2, 2009 - Randy Lundeen

Aesthetics, fiction and gameplay: these are three criteria that we always consider when employing a new art direction for a game. With a game as dark as Left 4 Dead, this meant having to figure out a lot of new ways to use the absence of light to our advantage.

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The Moviemaking Process: Left 4 Dead's Intro Movie

December 4, 2008 - Jason Mitchell

Because Left 4 Dead is a new property for us, we wanted to provide some basic player training prior to the start of the game. Traditional in-game training mechanics didn't make sense for Left 4 Dead, because they would take away from the sense that players had been immediately dropped into a very real, very dire zombie apocalypse.

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Play Left 4 Dead with Valve

November 20, 2008 - L4D Team

Join Left 4 Dead’s developers for a few campaigns against the zombie horde this Saturday, November 22 at 9:00 pm (EST). All you have to do is send off a game invite to one of the gamertags listed below. See you there!

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L4D Roundup: Contest Results, Great Deals and Early Reviews

November 18, 2008 - L4D Team

Our "Dude, Where's My Thumb?" contest finishes today. We asked hopefuls in the US and UK to submit a picture of themselves in front of a Left 4 Dead billboard for a chance to win prizes. Gabe Newell's looked through all the entries and selected 25 lucky winners
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Left 4 Dead is live on Steam

November 18, 2008 - L4D Team

As of midnight EST, the PC version of Left 4 Dead, Valve's zombie thriller, is now available via Steam to gamers around the globe. The title will be available for the PC and Xbox 360 at retail stores on Tuesday, November 18 in North America, and worldwide on Friday, November 21. For more information, please visit www.steamgames.com.
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Update, 5:24 pm

November 17, 2008 - L4D Team

Good news on the Valve Launch Box test run! There was an electrical fire, and all the bees burned to death. The bad news: several employees also perished in the fire and the game will be delayed. Just kidding! About the game. There were some burning deaths. But the game's coming out!

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The End is Near...

November 17, 2008 - L4D Team

Less than four hours to go until Left 4 Dead goes live at the stroke of midnight (EST) on Steam, and that means the Valve Launch Box will be dragged out of its off-season home in Gabe Newell's tool shed.

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Downloadable L4D Desktop Wallpaper

November 14, 2008 - L4D Team

We were going to title this post "Infect Your Desktop!" until someone remembered what a bad idea it is to put those words together in conjunction with free downloads. Our back-up title, "Put These Pictures on Your Computer," wasn't nearly as clever, so we'll just quit while we're ahead and let you download the wallpaper.

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Download the Left 4 Dead Demo!

November 11, 2008 - L4D Team

Left 4 Dead is finally here! Well, almost, anyway. The full game won’t be available for another week (November 18 on Steam and in retail stores across America). But you can get a taste of the blood-splattering, zombie-killing fun right now!

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L4D Art Direction, Part 1: Filmic Effects

November 10, 2008 - Randy Lundeen

One of the goals of Left 4 Dead's art direction was to capture the tone and feel of being right in the middle of a horror movie. This meant making the environments look scary in a specifically cinematic way.

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Left 4 Dead Intro Movie

October 31, 2008 - L4D Team

Less than a week from today, everyone who pre-ordered will be playing the Left 4 Dead demo. We know! We can't believe it either. To make the wait easier, we've released the five minute movie that opens the game. Caution: The movie may actually make the wait harder. Anyway, happy Halloween.

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It's the Zombie Ad-pocalypse.

October 30, 2008 - L4D Team

As part of our ongoing marketing campaign, we're airing a pair of commercials on network and cable television, including ABC, FOX, Spike, ESPN, MTV, Comedy Central, CBC and more. Created with footage from Left 4 Dead's opening sequence, the commercial goes live on television November 8th. But you can watch it online now!
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Dude, Where's My Thumb?

October 28, 2008 - L4D Team

Want to win a free copy of Left 4 Dead? How about a new gaming PC? All it takes is a snapshot of you in front of a Left 4 Dead billboard, bus, Jumbotron or other piece of outdoor advertising. So fire up your Leica and get over to the official contest page.
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Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!

October 25, 2008 - L4D Team

Hot off of solving the global credit crisis, world leaders have turned to more important matters. They have declared this Sunday October 26th, World Zombie Day. What better way to celebrate World Zombie Day than dress up like a zombie and shamble around?
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A Contest so Easy, Even a Zombie Could Win.

October 18, 2008 - L4D Team

The guys over at Left4Dead411.com just launched a new contest today with the grand prize being four copies of Left 4 Dead. The contest is all about getting your picture taken in front of a horde of zombies.

Where can you find a horde before November 18th? Left4Dead411 has plenty of tips. Just please remember to respect the native zombies, they get hungry for brains if you anger them.
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The Left 4 Dead Pre-Purchase Infection is Now On!

October 15, 2008 - L4D Team

Left 4 Dead is now available for pre-purchase worldwide via Steam! As with our pre-purchase promotions for retail PC and Xbox 360, customers who pre-purchase Left 4 Dead via Steam will save 10% off the regular price. Left 4 Dead will be released at retail on PC and Xbox 360 on November 18 in North America and November 21 in Europe. The worldwide Steam release will be November 18.
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Left 4 Dead Spreads Around the World

October 10, 2008 - L4D Team

In Germany, lucky members of the press were able to play co-op with Gabe Newell at the Leipzig Games Convention, while Torsten Zabka manned the L4D tour bus outside.
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Legoland of the Dead

October 3, 2008 - Erik Wolpaw

This weekend, expert Lego Builders from all over the world will convene in the Seattle Center Exhibition Hall for BrickCon 2008.
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First post - Welcome to the L4D blog

September 30, 2008 - Mike Booth

Since we announced Left 4 Dead in late 2006, the growing online community has been a great source of feedback and support during the development process. We're planning on using this blog to talk more directly with that community - through stories, artwork, and insights into our design and development process.
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