Left 4 Dead patch coming later this week

By Robert Purchese Published 13 January, 2009

It'll fix a "whole class of bugs", says Valve.

Valve's Chet Faliszek has said a meaty Left 4 Dead patch to fix a "whole class of bugs" should arrive this week.

Specifics are scarce, but we do know PC and Xbox 360 will be updated independently, according to a post on the Steam forums (spotted by CS-Nation).

Those swatting zombies on PC have been waiting for a patch for a while. Faliszek explains that the delay is down to Valve preferring to lump lots of changes together rather than drip-feed updates.

He also clarifies that the hold-up has nothing to do with Microsoft and the timing of an Xbox 360 patch, as forum posters seem to suggest. Silly old forum posters. Nobody listens to them.

Left 4 Dead is a co-operative shooter revolving around survivors fending off hordes of Infected zombie-like baddies, which can be controlled by the computer or by human people with hands.

We liked the game to the tune of 9/10, and even organised a Eurogamer readers versus Valve multiplayer event last Friday. Recalling his performance, editor Tom Bramwell told us how he set his Valve team on fire with molotov cocktails and forced his team to crouch to prevent him shooting them in the back by accident. He seemed quite pleased with himself.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (26) Latest comment 3 years ago

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

  • Slipstream #1 3 years ago

    Hopefully Smoker Insta-Kills and Movable Objects!

    Umm..wouldn't mind if they left 'a few doors unlocked' for expert though ;)

  • Tomo #2 3 years ago

    \o/ /o/ \o/ \o\ \o/ /o/ \o/

  • Inspirius #3 3 years ago

    Valve normally mention that steam allows them to make multiple patches per day if they desire. Now they're saying they don't like to drip feed updates, so which is it?

  • ChthonicEcho #4 3 years ago

    Valve normally mention that steam allows them to make multiple patches per day if they desire.

    You've answered your own question. 'Sides, there's Valve, and then there's Turtle Rock, who are a part of Valve, but aren't the same guys who said what you cited.

  • Buztafen #5 3 years ago

    Yup, as longs they fix no mercy exploits for the 360 im a happy chappy....also if they could make it so anyone who leaves a match half way through without good reason (death of family member, death of self) has there 360 melt i would be most happy!!!

  • Dazimus #6 3 years ago

    Wasn't there a 360 patch released last week?

  • Buztafen #7 3 years ago

    The patch released last week stopped people getting into the console commands, though only during link play matches as it was fixed on the sever side before that...

  • magicpanda #8 3 years ago

    You forgot to link to the review Rob ;)

  • Ignatius_Cheese #9 3 years ago

    HOORAY!! \o/

  • hbunny #10 3 years ago

    I played in last Friday's devs/eurogamer l4d session. The aura of having a l33t dev on my team seemed to rub off as I actually managed to play quite well as the infected - this had never happened before.

    Going back to playing with 'mere' mortals last night was a bit of a letdown.

  • Artemus #11 3 years ago

    Will it fix the cheaters warping to the end of campaigns just to get achievements?

  • Chufty #12 3 years ago

    Let's hope they have deleted all the shitty Xbox matchmaking code from the PC version and given us a correctly functioning server browser instead.

  • Schiraman #13 3 years ago

    @Chufty: +1

  • PinkSpider #14 3 years ago

    I hope they get rid of the elpoit stuff. It really is lame when people skip a good few minutes of the level.

  • kinky_mong #15 3 years ago

    hope they nerf the melee that makes hunters completely pointless

    They don't need to. People need to learn that there are other ways to pounce people besides head on.

  • hiddenranbir #16 3 years ago

    Hunters aren't useless. You deserve a stiff thump in the face if you're leaping at their front in plain sight.

  • sneetch #17 3 years ago

    @hiddenranbir
    "Hunters aren't useless. You deserve a stiff thump in the face if you're leaping at their front in plain sight."

    Kinda tricky to do anything else in some situations like the farmhouse finale where all four survivors are clustered in the corner at the very top of the stairs and two are constantly meleeing while the other two are blasting zombies coming up the stairs. (Yeah, and I mean constantly).

    Of course then the tank comes, so they run for the barn and one of them sits on the top of the ladder so you can't even reach them. Now you'd be forgiven for thinking that a hulking brute of a tank could barge a tiny slip of a girl off the top of a ladder but no, apparently not, he must be more gentlemanly than I thought. So you rip up a rock and they back off a bit then move right back to where they were as soon as you throw. A bit broken, I think that finale needs a bit of work for versus, the hospital rooftop is much better. Hopefully they will have done something.

    That said, if the survivors cluster up well then you're almost always pretty screwed. I think the smoker's death-smoke should do some appreciable damage. You could force them to move at least then.

  • sneetch #18 3 years ago

    @Chufty
    "Let's hope they have deleted all the shitty Xbox matchmaking code from the PC version and given us a correctly functioning server browser instead."

    +infinity

    That Xbox-style menu BS is baffling to me. Why go backwards? Why remove functionality? The lobbies are the only improvement in the L4D system, the rest is a step backwards. The damn thing can't even find an empty server when there are 8 or so empty ones in my Steam group tab. Give the lobby leader the option to pick a server: it ain't rocket science.

    I mean you can't even see who's in a friends game or queue to join it without bringing up the Steam overlay.

  • Yossarian #19 3 years ago

    Attn: 360 players (and that seems to be the majority, on the forums at least)

    Nowhere does he say the 360 patch is coming later this week. Only the PC.

  • Sunyavadin #20 3 years ago

    Yeah, but it's a bit crap that a player cannot be pounced at all if they sit crouched, spinning round with the melee button glued down... Especially when the game decides not to give you any smokers.

  • Yossarian #21 3 years ago

    Slash them instead. You'll do a lot more damage in most cases.

  • robson_wii #22 3 years ago

    I had the game crash several times when I used the rifle at the beginning of the level just after the church. As soon as I took a different weapon it was fine. Seems like a very odd bug.

  • XdarXideX #23 3 years ago

    I just hope they stop the Special Infected in Versus from being able to move objects, or at least for those objects to be movable by humans too.

  • ph101 #24 3 years ago

    For a server broswer option I heard you could :
    1. Open steam
    2. My Games tab
    3. Right click left4dead
    4. Click "Properties"
    5. Click "Set launch options"
    6. Type this in the box (without the quote marks) "add -serverbrowser"
    7. Press Ok
    8. Launch game
    9. have a browser menu option

    Or

    "If you want the traditional server browser you can now access it via the developer console. In the menu access Options, then Keyboard/Mouse, and then enable the Developer Console. After that hit your ~ key on your keyboard which should enable the dev console. After that type in "openserverbrowser" and you should see what's in our screenshot; a very familiar looking server browser."

    Or what i did, which was rename one of the menu files but i can remember which one. But that was before I knew the above.

    Either way good news patch, I love the game and want more levels and special infected and stuff.

  • wonton #25 3 years ago

    "openserverbrowser" command is identical to the server browser used in the CSs and TF2 but you can't start new games with it, you have to use the matchmaking feature for that.

    If you join an empty server in the server browser it seems to set to the same configs as the last game the server had :/ with no opportunity for new config, so its not entirely complete (guess devs don't intend it to be).

  • ph101 #26 3 years ago

    ^ when you join a game you could probably use the the "connect ip.number" console command as in CS, there are probably, i'm guessing, -qualifiers you could put after it to tell the server what settings to use, and the ato server just does this for you.. but i'm not bothereing to research it, the way it works automatically is perfectly fine for me.