“Left 4 Dead… should’ve been left for dead.”
I have been an avid player of Left 4 Dead 2 for years now. With that said, I'm 99% confident when I say Valve has either lost the source files for the game, or they absolutely hate it.
What makes me say this?
Well, it starts with my frustrations from experiencing everything the game has to offer. The saw-it-all-know-it-all effect, if you will. Play something long enough and eventually the flawed nuances become the glaring nuisances.
In three unreleased Snap scriptures, I expressed displeasure towards some things that became more significant as time went on. In short:
Versus sucks. The community is toxic. It's exploitable and unbalanced.
Survival sucks. It's just enemy spam. It's no fun after 10 minutes.
Fortunately, those two game modes are avoidable. I normally stick to Campaign. One thing ALL these modes have in common, though, is a terrible matchmaker.
Far too often you end up in modded games or a server across the world with 200+ ping. That, or some garbage community server that has turned the expected zombie survival experience into some kind of bombastic, LSD-induced anime escapade.
These issues have existed in the game since forever, but Valve can't be assed to fix it. Is it laziness or resent? Or both? Let's find out...
This isn’t working
I am of the opinion that Valve has an animosity towards Left 4 Dead.
Sure, it had its “Last Stand” update back in 2020, but Valve only let them scratch the surface. They wouldn’t let community contributors touch anything beyond map files, models, textures, and basic scripting. The more advanced stuff (like modifying the matchmaker to NOT be terrible) was out of their reach.
Therein lies the issue. Valve developers can't be assed to touch the advanced stuff either, so those problems remain in limbo.
So what does one do when that is the case? Well… for me personally, I sent an email and voiced my concerns to the big Gaben himself.
It was a shot in the dark. Maybe he could get somebody to fix this mess. After all, Gabe (supposedly) reads all his emails. I mean, a quick look on the Steam (الله يغفر لي على هذا الكلمة) subreddit shows he’ll happily respond to memes…
But unfortunately, that isn't so much the case for concerned consumers of the less marketable Valve titles.
I haven't heard back from the guy in almost a month (and I never will), so that's that. Oh well, you miss every shot you don't take.
No matter. He's a busy guy. I mean, this is the Jesus Christ of the gaming community we're talking about. Obviously it takes a lot of work to keep a title like that, such as... hosting e-sports events across the pond, making flagships for ephemeral hardware, capitalizing on the nostalgia of Half-Life fans and making them think that Half-Life's 25-year story might finally come to an end, and virtual knife reskins.
As for the Valve developers under him, I get it. Taking the initiative to work on basic quality of life improvements for things that have practically cemented your legacy is just silly. If I were a Valve developer? I would never stoop so low. I'd rather work on things I know people want, like card games.
Half a heart for Half-Life
Jokes aside, something is amiss. Valve's relationship with Left 4 Dead is an odd (but not surprising) one. Let's not forget that L4D2 was not exactly a welcome addition to the Valve catalog when it was first released.
Many gamers were upset that Valve was releasing a sequel so soon after the first game, and blasted the company for not keeping their promise of supporting the first game with several DLC packs. They felt that Left 4 Dead 2 was more like an expansion than a full-fledged sequel, and that it should have been offered as a free update or a cheaper DLC. A group of fans organized a boycott of the game on Steam, which attracted over 40,000 members at its peak.
It was a boycott the community wanted, and in return Valve abandoned ship entirely. Wouldn't be the first time.
There was the mounting criticisms from the Team Fortress 2 updates (Gun Mettle + Tough Break which added weapon skins, End of the Line + Invasion which were community update failures, Meet your Match which completely butchered matchmaking) which caused Valve to leave TF2 in the dust.
There was the "Half-Life hype" which put pressure on Valve to make HL3 perfect... so much so, they just stopped talking about it altogether and pretended the series never existed (that was until it became a convenient platform to market their VR headset).
I just feel like there is an emerging pattern. Valve takes criticism personally, and it's why they've backed themselves into this corner of perpetually pouring fresh paint on their beloved CSGO and DOTA to keep making those things shining forever and ever.
I was inspired to write this piece because of this video:
(Go to 2:46)
It may seem like a fun little story at face value, and maybe I’m reading too much into it, and maybe I'm taking it out of context, but Gabe seemed to have a vicious reaction to Left 4 Dead.
“...well let's not do zombies, zombies are just cheesy.”
“Gabe is... not yelling at me, but he is confronting me in a restaurant, saying ‘(Left 4 Dead) has no story’, and ‘how can we make a game with no story’, and ‘this is gonna be a disaster’ and ‘if (you) don't come up with a story, (I) will’. He is just pushing.”
I find it ironic that the CEO of a company notorious for creating games with never-ending stories (excluding Portal 2) or no stories at all (such as Team Fortress and Counter-Strike) is complaining about a game lacking a narrative… but again, it could be out of context.
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