Valve dangles early Left 4 Dead 2 DLC

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 7 July, 2011

Wants your help squashing bugs.

Valve will release Dead Air from the upcoming Cold Stream Left 4 Dead 2 DLC on 22nd July if 20,000 people can earn the Stream Crosser achievement by the end of this Sunday.

To get the Stream Crosser achievement, you need to survive a campaign of Cold Stream on any difficulty.

"Normally on an internal project we would have the whole company take a part of each day and do nothing but play the upcoming game or DLC and submit bugs," Valve wrote on the L4D blog.

"To add to the fun we often give out prizes for participating. Since Cold Stream is not just being developed internally but also with the community - we want the community to help pound on the campaign and look for bugs."

The Cold Stream DLC, which has been in beta testing for a few months now on PC and Mac, is a collaborative project between Valve and the Left 4 Dead community.

It started life as a community campaign created by modder Matthew Lourdelet before catching the eye of the folks at Valve who then decided to jump in, buff it up and give it a full release.

Tom gave Left 4 Dead 2 a 9/10 for Eurogamer in November 2009. "It's an amazing volume of new modes and features for a game that once kept things simple, but it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise to see them," he wrote.

"Whereas once we treated Left 4 Dead as a stopgap between Half-Lifes, this is no longer a weird little side project with modest expectations, and Valve is confident enough to play around with it, safe in the knowledge that you can trust your players. Left 4 Dead proved it. And whereas that game had a personality, this one is overflowing with it."

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (12) Latest comment 11 months ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Whizzo #1 11 months ago

    Dead Air is one of the original L4D campaigns.

    I did my part to push things along by completing Cold Stream last night.

  • RedPanda #2 11 months ago

    Post deleted at 14:31:59 28-01-2012

  • aphex187 #3 11 months ago

    It may be fun for Valve but it ain't for the community, especially for a game that a lot of people have now left. Stop pissing around and release the L4D maps and then we should see a resurgence of this once great game.

  • Spunkweazle #4 11 months ago

    @Superset

    Thats as i understood it too, they said it would come out after portal 2

  • Tricky #5 11 months ago

    What part of the word "early" are you guys missing?

  • marmaduke #6 11 months ago

    @aphex- They're doing just that. Have you been following this at all?

    The trouble with Cold Stream isn't with the bugs, it's with the design. It's completely linear yet the way forward isn't very clear, there are far too many opportunities for the infected to get instant kills, and in more than one place the survivors have to fight through an endless wave of zombies with no respite.

  • Whizzo #7 11 months ago

    Agreed, it's a nice idea but there's certainly a lot of problems with it, the ladder climb up from underground is ridiculous as an example.

  • Butr0sButr0s #8 11 months ago

    I agree with the two posters above - Cold Stream works well against the computer in campaign setting, but in VS. its too heavy handed in favoring the special infected. I've never been a fan of 'instant kill' areas in L4D, they always seemed somewhat cheap. Once or twice in a campaign is more than enough for instant kill opportunities, but cold stream is chalked full of them.

  • geeza2020 #9 11 months ago

    Erm, maybe I missed it in the article, but is this DLC coming to consoles or is it exclusive to PC forever?

  • TheGuvernor #10 11 months ago

    "Whereas once we treated Left 4 Dead as a stopgap between Half-Lifes, this is no longer a weird little side project with modest expectations"

    What an arrogant twat!
    L4D was a complete revelation when it came out - staggeringly original!
    Honestly.

  • DAN.E.B #11 11 months ago

    I thought all this DLC was out "early spring" I just hope theres still people playing it
    I will buy this DLC as I havent played L4D2 in ages it seems like the wait for DLC is way too long!!

  • aphex187 #12 11 months ago

    @marmaduke

    Of course i have dear but the fact that the DLC has been sat in our Steam folder ready for Valve and their ever tiring slow ways only makes matters worse. Don't get me wrong i love this game but going by the lack of comments to this topic shows that the game needs a boost for the community and by hanging onto those L4D maps just because of a bug ridden beta map made by a non Valve employee seems ludicrous ;)