Left 4 Dead DLC will be free

By Tom Bramwell Published 12 February, 2009

Night of the giving dead.

Valve has announced that the upcoming springtime downloadable content for Left 4 Dead on PC and Xbox 360 will be free.

The Survival Pack, confirmed last week, introduces a new game mode called Survival and enables Versus mode for the Death Toll and Dead Air campaigns.

The launch will also coincide with a remastered "Critic's Choice Edition" for shops, featuring the original game and all the new downloadable extras.

The fact Valve doesn't plan to charge for DLC may be unusual, but it will come as no surprise to long-time admirers of the Washington-based developer, which has repeatedly rejected premium downloads.

"You buy the product, you get the content," Team Fortress 2 designer Robin Walker explained to Eurogamer prior to that game's release.

"We make more money because more people buy it, not because we try and nickel-and-dime the same customers." Quite so.

Check out our Left 4 Dead review to find out why else we heart Valve's zombie co-op shooter.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

You may also like...

Comments (41) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Buztafen #1 3 years ago

    Thats the shit right there!!!!......now wheres the patch my good men?

  • Doctor_What #2 3 years ago

    "Night of the giving dead"? I think you may have won the EG Pun Headline Of The Day award and it's not even 9am yet!

  • mikew1985 #3 3 years ago

    Hmm I know they'll want to give it to us free but will MS let them? Don't they hate letting devs give free DLC or something? Hopefully this comes shortl after the patch(oh yeah... where the HELLL is that?!!)

  • Goodfella #4 3 years ago

    Well, it will certainly be free on the PC version so I'm ok. :p

    Valve = Epic Win but please, I'll gladly pay for new campaigns, by far my preferred game mode.

  • DFawkes #5 3 years ago

    As far as I know, the only reason they'll be charging for the Team Fortress 2 stuff is because Microsft forced them. Maybe that's lies, but there have been many similar stories that'd make it plausible enough.

    Still, I wouldn't mind paying a nominal fee for the 360 dlc, given how good the game is and that I really want Versus Dead Air.

  • muscleblade #6 3 years ago

    New achievements? I would like a few new VS achieves. Versus is by far the best game mode imo.

  • systems #7 3 years ago

    Very decent of them.

  • rhubarbandcustard #8 3 years ago

    "As far as I know, the only reason they'll be charging for the Team Fortress 2 stuff is because Microsoft forced them. Maybe that's lies, but there have been many similar stories that'd make it plausible enough. "

    There have been many similar news stories because videogame web news is all copy and paste stuff.

    For the original story generally go to IGN or Gamespot of Joystik. Eurogamers copy and paste news normally appears a day later.

    None of them are real journalists you know.

    Now enough of that...

    Left 4 Dead DLC is FREE.

    FREE!!!

    Thank you Valve.

  • hiddenranbir #9 3 years ago

    Indeed. Incredibly slow on the news - makes me wonder why bother providing us with it. Just focus on reviews. More reviews. Maybe on games that the big sites ignore and skips.


    And of course Valve would make it free! What else is new?

  • penhalion #10 3 years ago

    "We make more money because more people buy it, not because we try and nickel-and-dime the same customers."

    How is Valve one of the few companies that get's it?

    A lot of companies are really pissing off their customers by nickle and diming them for content downloads of stuff that should have already been in the games! Capcom and the SF4 costumes immediately springs to mind. Even just a year back, these costumes would have been unlocked after beating the game with that character. It was standard practice to include such stuff in games. Now it seems to have shifted to standard practice to nickle and dime those extras.

  • kinky_mong #11 3 years ago

    Yet more reasons why Valve are just brilliant.

    I Wuv you Valve!

  • Gurrah #12 3 years ago

    Now Valve only have to sort the Steam pricing issues out and I'll get the Steam-logo tattoed on my ass.

  • kangarootoo #13 3 years ago

    "Night of the giving dead"

    Strong work :)

  • kangarootoo #14 3 years ago

    @Mogs

    DLC costs money to make. We can't expect it to ALL be free. You call it righteous, but Valve themselves have said that they are still making the money by selling more copies of the original title.

    Now you might think that is always a good thing, but Valve are of a size where they can make that model work for them. A smaller developer can't afford to follow the same model, so they have to charge for their DLC at source.

    Following this righteous path across the board will mean the only people releasing DLC are the big companies like Valve. Is that really a good thing? Personally, I prefer to havethe choice.

  • bodypopper #15 3 years ago

    Cool but going on past Valve promises will it be out in spring this year or next?
    ;-)
    Edited by 1 at 12/02/09 @ 10:00

  • iter #16 3 years ago

    Awesome. This should be free, but still appreciated!

    However, like 'Goodfella' said, if they make some new campaigns - these will be worth paying for. :)

  • RedPanda #17 3 years ago

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

  • MattyD #18 3 years ago

    I wish people would stop calling this DLC. It's just going to be a title update like when they added Annex mode to Gears of War. There's no actual *content* to be had.

  • kangarootoo #19 3 years ago

    @Mogs

    But what defines expansion pack size? Hours of gameplay, area of game world added, megabytes of assets, some kind of "funaddedometer" number?

    I don't really see the value of all these torch and pitchfork weilding" rules and principals. Unless something changed recently that I am not aware of, we could still decide for ourselves whether or to buy these things.

    So what is wrong with the traditional "Make what you want, and price it however you want, if if we think you got it wrong we will let you know by not buying your product".

    Putting down these hard and fast rules about what DLC should be and how much it should cost will just result in less DLC being made. If a company is put in a situation where it can't make money, it is simply going to stop taking part. All this "patch of righteousness" hyperbole seems to ignore the fact that every business needs to make a profit or it goes out of business.

  • GamesConnoisseur #20 3 years ago

    WE love Valve but shame that PS3 needs a lot more loving from Valve!

  • SixFootHalfling #21 3 years ago

    "I wish people would stop calling this DLC. It's just going to be a title update like when they added Annex mode to Gears of War. There's no actual *content* to be had."

    A new game mode, and 2 edited campaigns to facilitate fair online play,(admittedly that should have been in from the start) isn't new content?

    Hmm what else should we call content that is downloadable but DLC?

    Valve were never going to force Steam users to pay, as I can download all the maps from here: http://l4dmapdb.wikidot .com/, so the only thing I'd be missing is survival, which sounds a lot like horde. And not to mention PC gamers wouldn't pay.

  • kangarootoo #22 3 years ago

    "This hair hasn't been split! Proper examination shows it has in fact been cleanly cut along its length."

    That by which we call a rose, by any other word...

  • skillian #23 3 years ago

    'DLC' as it's now known was always free in the past before MS took advantage of console owners' ignorance as they were the first to do online in a big way on consoles.

    +1

    Dowloadable content is nothing new - Xbox Live just gave it a price and an acronym, and now an small update is a worthy news story because we're not being charged, even though that company and many others like it have been giving out free content for over a decade.

    /laments

  • iter #24 3 years ago

    FYI: DLC isn't an acronym.

  • skillian #25 3 years ago

    But I pronounce it "dilk" ;)

    You're correct, it's an initialism, although the amount that people use "acronym" instead of "initialism" almost means that the definition is changing. But yes, you're right.

  • iter #26 3 years ago

    @skillian

    Heh. I was just pointing out (in a protracted fashion) that they didn't even give it an acronym. :)

    I was, of course, also being a pedantic bastard. On that note, it isn't an initialism either. :)

  • skillian #27 3 years ago

    At the risk of annoying everyone by going so far off topic (though I've probably already done that by now with my "you're all mugs" attitude";), I'm intrigued. Why is DLC not an initialism?

    edit: OK, I think I get it - "downloadable" is a single word, so the DL aren't initials. Got another word to replace it? Abbreviation perhaps?
    Edited by 1 at 12/02/09 @ 12:42

  • iter #28 3 years ago

    Yes, you are correct, I think 'abbreviation' is the only suitable description of it. I don't know of a better word - perhaps someone else will, or perhaps we should let it go now. :)

  • kangarootoo #29 3 years ago

    @Mogs

    "If you can't afford to finance trivial updates to games and give them away for free (especially considering it's likely to give you extra sales of the main game - I just bought UT3 after the announcement that new free stuff is being added soon) then you're doing it wrong"

    I think I can safely assume you have never been self employed or ran a business. In a capitilist market, still being in business 5 years after you started out probably means you doing at least one thing right.

    The thing I don't understand here is by whose terms do you declare that anyone not making DLC for nothing is doing it wrong. I can understand that in your own mind you would like extra things without paying for them, but I don't see how you aren't able to see the conflict when that desire isn't placed in reality.


    At its heart, we have a situation where you say that developers should spend money making extra content, but then give that extra content away for free, ALL THE TIME. And that iof they don't give their investment away for free, they are "doing it wrong". I whole heartedly disagree. Just because you can write that they are "doing it wrong" doesn't make it true.

    Just like writing "'DLC' as it's now known was always free in the past" doesn't make it true either. Simply put, it is not true. Some (many?) expansion packs in the past cost money, patches were free. But sometimes patches didn't get made and games stayed buggy.

    You cannot look at history as a record and state "content used to be free", because that ignores the fact that a lot of content that would today be released as paid for DLC simply didn't get made in years gone by. It wasn't free, or chargeble, it was simply not there.


    I say again, this is just another case of gamers taking what they want, and confusing that with what they have a right to.

  • metalangel #30 3 years ago

    DLC was always free? Since when?! How is it anything other than a different way of obtaining the expansion disks that computer gamers have been buying for decades?

  • kangarootoo #31 3 years ago

    @Mogs

    P.s. I hope you aren't suggesting that devs sit around eating caviar with every meal, paid for by the mountains of cash they make from DLC.

  • kangarootoo #32 3 years ago

    @metalangel

    Eeeeeeeeexxxactly.

  • skillian #33 3 years ago

    Content that used to be sold in expansion packs was significantly more than what comes in most DLC these days, and Mogs, and others I'm sure, have already said that significant content like that is worth paying for (the GTA DLC for example) - not many people expect that for free.

    But most modern DLC consists of extra maps, a new gun new skins or costumes for example and doesn't come close to the amount of content in old expansion packs - the only old paid-for expansions that I can think of to compare would be furniture packs for the Sims.

    Certainly an extra game-mode such as in this update, would have been madness to try and charge for on the PC just a few years ago, but know we're all saying how awesome/surprising it is that it's free. Surely that should tell you how things have changed?

  • kangarootoo #34 3 years ago

    @skillian

    "significantly more than what comes in most DLC these days"

    These are still very wooly terms we are using here.

    "the only old paid-for expansions that I can think of to compare would be furniture packs for the Sims"

    Which as I recall were quite cheap.


    You see, I remember the expansion packs for the first Ghost Recon game. They were very substantial, but they also cost £20.

    I still fail to see why the usual "I'll look at what you're offfering, and I'll look at the price, and I'll make my decision on whether buy it or not" routine doesn't work just fine, the way it alway has.

    Comparing to yesteryears doens't hold water anyway, as games have consistently got cheaper over the years. When i was a nipper I might pay £8-10 for a big name Commodore 64 game. AND that game might last me 2 hours start to finish (if all games weren't so damn hard with no save system back then). That was what, 15-20 years ago? You take £8 back then and work out what it should be today with inflation added, and you will see that games are massively better value than they have ever been.


    Another anecdote. Oblivion out of the box had over 120 hours of gameplay for me, before I finally stopped. Is it reasonable for me to demand that DLC for Oblivion be free, given the collosal sack of value they put my way in the first place?

    We simply aren't comparing apples with apples in most cases, and honestly I think some gamers ignore that fact because it suits them to do so. Really, developers and publishers can do whatever the hell they like, but if we the buying public don't like it and take our dosh elsewhere, they will soon change their tune (why do I find myself saying that over and over on these pages).

  • 8bitMofo #35 3 years ago

    SOLD!

    Best news of 09 thus far.

  • skillian #36 3 years ago

    Firstly, I'm not demanding that DLC be free - I just think it's a rip-off.

    Yes, it's difficult to pinpoint the exact definition of how much makes up an expansion pack, but it doesn't really matter as I'm not suggesting some arbitrary cut off point below which should be free and above which should be expensive.

    Here is an example: Company of Heroes released two free maps before its expansion was released. This was cool. The paid-for expansion consisted of two new teams to play with, including completely new units and completely new weapons and special abilities. It also included a host of multiplayer maps, plus two entire single player campaigns. That was significant expansion and well worth paying, but I don't need to count the megabytes to know that.

    I still fail to see why the usual "I'll look at what you're offfering, and I'll look at the price, and I'll make my decision on whether buy it or not" routine doesn't work just fine, the way it alway has.

    It "works" (whatever that means), but gamers are missing out. Take Skate 2 (where I believe we had a similar discussion in the comments thread) - they recently released DLC to unlock the maps in single player. A few years ago everyone would probably have had that ability to do so with a button press, but know if you want to do that you have to pay £3.50. You can go "well that's capitalism, good on them for making some extra cash", and I'm not suggesting they should be banned from selling such a feature, but there's no question in my mind that people are missing out because of it.

    It's a weird discussion because it ends up with you saying "why can't they release what they like, it's how market forces work" and me saying "well I know it's market forces, but it still sucks". Our views are probably not that disimilar, and I suspect that you wouldn't be someone to pay for an unlock cheat.

    For me the perfect example of how this thing sucks is Epic - for years they released tons of free content, but since they became a primarliy Xbox developer just one new maps is being charged for.This hardly fits in with your model that big developers can afford to give stuff away, but small guys will go to the wall if they do so.

    I think they didn't want to charge, but Microsoft encouraged/forced them to do so, and in my mind there's one reason for that - MS are trying to change people's expectations about what they should pay for and what they can get for free in order to make charging for stuff more palatable for future gamers. They are also doing the same thing with online play. Their strategy is working, as people know will readily accept what just a few years ago would have been unthinkable.

    edit: Wow, epic post, but it still didn't come across exactly how I wanted it to. I hope you don't think I'm being agressive towards you as you are clearly one of the best posters on the site, and I quite enjoy our little head-to-heads when the issue of DLC, piracy or DRM comes up :)
    Edited by 2 at 12/02/09 @ 15:27

  • kangarootoo #37 3 years ago

    @skilian

    "It's a weird discussion because it ends up with you saying "why can't they release what they like, it's how market forces work" and me saying "well I know it's market forces, but it still sucks". Our views are probably not that disimilar, and I suspect that you wouldn't be someone to pay for an unlock cheat."

    I was actually starting to think the same thing. Sort of wondering "where do I go with this next, 'cos we don't actually have that much we don't agree on really, unless we start splitting hairs just to keep the argument going".


    "MS are trying to change people's expectations about what they should pay for and what they can get for free in order to make charging for stuff more palatable for future gamers. They are also doing the same thing with online play. Their strategy is working, as people know will readily accept what just a few years ago would have been unthinkable"

    I think you are right on the nail with that one. Although XBLive does give you features that didn't used to be present in oinline gaming (though services like GameSpy probably filled the void before XBLive actually came along).


    Like you say, I think we do agree in principal and really we only differ in attitude. Some people (not you in particular) look at the situation and see it does not serve them as well as they would like, and then say "its not fair, they should do XYZ", and then I see the same thing, and pretty much form the same opinion on how it doesn't serve me very well, but then my comment is "life isn't fair most of the time, what has fair even got to do with it really".

    Maybe I'm just jaded. There was definitely a time when I would have been quoting Mogs nearly word for word.

  • skillian #38 3 years ago

    There was definitely a time when I would have been quoting Mogs nearly word for word.

    Before you started in the business maybe? Income from gaming is more important for you, expenditure for games is more important for me ;)

  • kangarootoo #39 3 years ago

    That might just be it :)

  • Slipstream #40 3 years ago

    So then, have Valve been able to win MS over?

  • kwesleyb #41 3 years ago

    Its got to the point i cant love Valve any more than i already do :D