Left 4 Dead

Microsoft has announced that Half-Life 2's The Orange Box, Portal, Left 4 Dead, and Left 4 Dead 2 all now feature 4K enhancements on Xbox One X.

Valve veteran Jay Pinkerton has returned to the developer a year after he left the company.

Valve has stepped up its anti-cheat measures and issued almost 95,000 bans in the last week alone.

Left 4 Dead and Evolve developer Turtle Rock Studios has announced its new VR game The Well.

The Well is a fantasy RPG where players find themselves exploring Tholl - "a world beyond your imagination". When a demonic force called the Tesh threatens to destroy the Tholl, you are summoned to keep the balance.

Playing as a either a mage, rogue, warrior or druid, players recruit allies, brave the wilderness, unearth the mysteries of Tholl and ultimately defeat the Tesh. You can check out the announcement trailer below.

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Former Valve scribe Chet Faliszek, best known for his work on the Portal and Left 4 Dead games, along with the Half-Life 2 episodic expansions, has joined Bossa Studios.

Evolve and Left 4 Dead creator Turtle Rock has announced a new co-operative shooter with strong dark fantasy elements for free-to-play online game publisher Perfect World (Neverwinter, Star Trek Online).

"We're focusing on what we do best," studio co-founder Phil Robb told GamesIndustry.biz, "heart-pounding moment-to-moment online co-op FPS action."

The game has no revealed name but will use Unreal Engine and be released 2018. Platforms aren't mentioned but PC is a given.

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Left 4 Dead developer Turtle Rock has been cleaning house.

Portal 2 and Left 4 Dead have been added to the Xbox One's Xbox One's backwards compatibility list.

A jury ruled in favour of defendant Valve on 2nd November 2017, finding the plaintiff was not discriminated against for transgender or disability reasons, nor dismissed for such.

Earlier this week Valve released its very own SteamVR Performance Test, and now people are fussing over Half-Life 3 and Left 4 Dead 3. Again.

Given how frequently video game characters take damage, you'd think most developers would be medical experts by now. Sadly, that couldn't be farther from the truth; you only need glance at some of the healing methods in video games to know that something is rotten in the hospitals of Denmark.

Undead Nazi shooter Zombie Army Trilogy has called up the cast of Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2.

Former Valve economist Yanis Varoufakis has quit as Greek finance minister just six months after taking the job.

Valve stalwart Chet Faliszek will deliver a developer session at EGX Rezzed 2015, the UK event dedicated to PC, indie and console gaming.

Faliszek is one of the main writers at Valve, and has worked on the likes of Half-Life, Portal, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Left 4 Dead. (Hey, Chet, where's Left 4 Dead 3, eh?)

He's also no stranger to Gamer Network events - at the Eurogamer Expo 2012 he did a developer session on how to give yourself a job in the game industry. Check it out in the video below.

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This is a little story about a magazine that no longer exists, and a game that, for all intents and purposes, no longer exists either.

UPDATE 14/05/2014: A new trailer for Left 4 Dead: Survivors finally shows gameplay footage of the Japanese arcade spin-off.

Left 4 Dead 3 and Source 2 were spotted by members of the Dota 2 subReddit during a recent tour of Valve's Seattle office.

Such is his influence on the world of videogames and computing that it's a wonder Gabe Newell hasn't been inducted into the prestigious Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame already. This coming February at the 2013 D.I.C.E. summit will be his moment.

Hello Eurogamers, how have you been? We've been pretty busy over on Outside Xbox and, if you'll indulge us, we'd like to show you the best bits from the past seven days.

It's a busy time for Valve, and it's a busy time for Chet Faliszek. Fresh from his work on Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (more on its absence from the EU PlayStation Store later), he's now hard at work making Left 4 Dead, the ground-breaking co-op zombie thriller, better. But he still found the time to pop along to Eurogamer Expo last week to deliver a developer session (twice) on how to get a job in the game industry.

Payday: The Heist's free Mercy Hospital DLC is out today on Steam.

YouTube user digitalarts001 has used PlayStation Mobile to power PC and Xbox 360 game Left 4 Dead on Vita.

The Payday: The Heist - No Mercy level is not a Left 4 Dead prequel, Valve has insisted.

A trailer for Payday: The Heist - No Mercy has just gone live.

Multiplayer focused first-person shooters Payday: The Heist and Left 4 Dead are blending together, Overkill has announced.

Portal 2 was more successful on the PC than it was on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, Valve boss Gabe Newell has revealed.

The next game from Turtle Rock Studios raises the bar it set with superb zombie shooter Left 4 Dead, according to publisher THQ.

Techland's eye-catching Dead Island trailer, which shows a reverse-time account of a young girl on a tropical holiday island being torn away from her parents, become a zombie and eventually be flung out of a window, turned heads - but what did Valve, the maker of Left 4 Dead, perhaps the best zombie game of this generation, think?

"It's pretty awesome. It's really good," Left 4 Dead writer Chet Faliszek told Eurogamer.

"I think it's great, but I just had a baby this year and I just had a weird feeling," offered writing partner Erik Wolpaw. "The violence towards kids is unpleasant. I'm not offended by it, but it's unpleasant in a way that makes it difficult to watch.

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On Valve's website sits a profile page, and on that profile page sits an entry for Left 4 Dead writer Chet Faliszek. It reads: "We are all still trying to figure out exactly what it is that Chet does at Valve, but at the very least he occupies office space on the 11th floor as self-proclaimed Mr. Awesome."

An image detected in an advert for the Video Game Awards has sparked speculation of a Left 4 Dead-related reveal.

Gabe Newell has revealed that Valve was toying around with a "flying fairy game" before it began work on Left 4 Dead.

Valve has announced a new three-map campaign for cooperative zombie shooters Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2.

Valve has revealed the tagline for Left 4 Dead 2 downloadable add-on The Passing, and with it some big news about the original Left 4 Dead survivors.

Former Valve studio Turtle Rock has reformed and appears to be working on new projects, according to updates on its website and Facebook.

Valve has said that Left 4 Dead owners on Windows and Mac will be able to join forces or go head to head cross-platform in multiplayer.

Valve has sent Eurogamer a teaser image for something to do with Left 4 Dead.

Check it out below. It was accompanied by a note that said: "In anticipation of an upcoming announcement from Valve."

The Apple-esque stamp in the top right, complete with "I hate different" tagline, suggests we may be seeing something Mac or iPhone-related.

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Valve has said that Left 4 Dead 2 add-on The Passing is due out in March.

Indie game developer Eric Ruth has released an 8-bit inspired take on Valve's Left 4 Dead, and it's available to download for PC on his website.

Valve's released a Left 4 Dead 2 toolset that allows the PC community to build maps for each other.

Publishers and developer are free to drop and raise the price of digitally released games without any penalty to future sales or consumer loyalty, according to Valve's head of Steam, Jason Holtman, as reported on GamesIndustry.biz.

Valve has finally patched Left 4 Dead 1 on PC to introduce competitive matchmaking for groups of four players.

Valve has announced that Gabe Newell and Erik Johnson will be flying to Australia next week to meet a modder who raised $3000 for their airfares.

Left 4 Dead add-on Crash Course has been released on Steam and Xbox Live Marketplace, as Valve said it would be.

Valve has announced that the Crash Course downloadable content for Left 4 Dead will be released for PC and Xbox 360 on 29th September.

Valve's Chet Faliszek has told Eurogamer that upcoming downloadable Left 4 Dead 1 expansion Crash Course costs money on Xbox Live because Microsoft insisted upon it.

Valve hasn't figured out yet whether the new Crash Course campaign will work with both Left 4 Dead and the upcoming Left 4 Dead 2.

Valve has announced plans to release a new campaign for the original Left 4 Dead next month, which will be free on PC and cost 560 Microsoft Points (£4.76 / €6.72) on Xbox Live.

Valve is considering allowing Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 owners to play together online.

Valve has revealed, via its Left 4 Dead blog, that it will update the PC version of Left 4 Dead with the ability to create and view user-made campaigns and maps this week.

Valve speaker Doug Lombardi has said the existence of Left 4 Dead 2 does not mean there will be no new content for Left 4 Dead 1. Quite the opposite.

Valve will be cutting the price of Left 4 Dead on Steam by 40 per cent this weekend to just GBP 16.19. The offer ends on Monday.

Valve will offer a free, day-long Left 4 Dead trial tomorrow.

Last night a quartet of hardened Eurogamer readers soundly beat Valve at its own game, Left 4 Dead.

Valve has announced the next batch of downloadable content for Left 4 Dead will be released today.

Valve has detailed the free Survival Pack update for Left 4 Dead, claiming that "the number of zombies killed in a single round often outnumbers an entire campaign".

In a post on the Left 4 Dead blog (thanks Kotaku), Valve's Kerry Davis and Scott Dalton explain that the idea is straightforward: to last for as long as possible while the game heaps a neverending rush of Infected upon your team in waves.

Games should "regularly last under ten minutes, and emphasise competition with team play through leaderboards", the update says.

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Microsoft has officially confirmed release dates for the Xbox 360 Left 4 Dead Survival Pack (21st April), Halo 3 Mythic Map Pack (9th April) and Gears of War 2 Snowblind Map Pack (31st March), even though we knew at least one of those already. The L4D pack is also due out for PC, presumably around the same time.

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

Valve has released details of the first downloadable content pack for its co-op zombie shooter Left 4 Dead - the L4D Survival Pack.

The release will include a new multiplayer mode called Survival and two complete campaigns for the game's versus mode, and be available for both the PC and Xbox 360 versions.

Also in the spring, PC users will get a free-to-download Software Development Kit allowing the mod community to start creating custom campaigns for the game - which, when completed, can be fully integrated with Left 4 Dead's matchmaking system.

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Valve has rolled out a hulking PC patch for Left 4 Dead that puts right a host of exploits and further tweaks the acclaimed co-op shooter.

The update is applied automatically through Steam. Valve plans to offer the same fix for Xbox 360 "in the coming weeks".

Of the changes (listed below), the "increased chance of getting the Tank or Witch" during Versus game modes scares us, especially as both will now spawn "directly on the escape route".

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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.

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Valve has released an update for the Xbox 360 version of zombie shooter Left 4 Dead that stops the proliferation of cheats and hacks in the game.

Last month, Ars Technica and others reported nightmare scenes of giant-sized players, and super-enemies like witches and tanks spawning in huge numbers in supposedly safe areas of the game. Like it was on a PC or something.

Now Joystiq has established that the title update to the game earlier this week has fixed all that.

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Talking to Kotaku in a video podcast, Valve's Chet Faliszek as good as confirmed that downloadable content is in the works for Left 4 Dead.

Faliszek told viewers to expect an announcement soon. "We have the DLC coming, we're going to do the 360 at the same time as the PC," he said.

Faliszek didn't say what form the DLC would take, but said that Valve was focused on "more content you can play".

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Gears of War 2 has topped the November software sales chart for the US, in what was a strong month for Xbox 360 games.

Valve has made server-side fixes to stop people cheating when playing Left 4 Dead on Xbox 360.

Valve president Gabe Newell has reportedly told an anxious fan that he believes there is "a groundswell to abandon" DRM in PC games.

Valve has published public Achievement statistics for its latest zombie shooter, Left 4 Dead, on the Steam website.

Call of Duty: World at War has clung onto the UK all-formats top spot this week despite a chart stuffed with newcomers.

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Eurogamer readers will be able to question Valve "Mr Awesome" Chet Faliszek this afternoon from 5pm GMT in our latest live text interview.

My favourite moment in Left 4 Dead? I'm playing Versus mode, and we've reached the apex of the Blood Harvest campaign in a desperate farmhouse siege against overwhelming odds. I'm part of the overwhelming odds, playing the corpulent blob that is the Boomer. I wobble up to a window and look inside, to see Louis firing away desperately at the horde around him. I just watch, smiling, waiting for him to turn in my direction. Only when he does, when he realises that I'm standing there, do I spray him with my zombie-attracting vomit, prompting another wave of infected to crowd in and hammer him to death.

Actually, writing about Blood Harvest reminds me of something that may be even better. I'm playing with a group of survivors who've yet to make the desperate run across the fields to get to the farmhouse, and I'm trying to explain that the trick is to just get a move on. We get there, get organised and start the clock for the rescue to arrive as soon as we bloody can. It will only get worse. They seem to get it. We drop into the grass and scarper. Sheer chaos. I make my way to the farmhouse, and only then do I turn around to realise everyone I'm with has climbed on top of the enormous pile of hay-bales in the distance and are trying to hold them off there. And I'm alone in the house as the waves start to move in...

No - mentioning that reminds me of something else. It's right at the start of a level. We've opened the door to find a med-kit in the room down the corridor. Now, we've each got a med-kit, so we haven't space to carry the leftover. However, about fifty or so metres on, all hell breaks loose, and I end up covered with vomit, pummelled by a mob and generally taken to pieces. I use my med-kit and weigh the odds... I know there's one back there. It's really near. And since we're playing versus, there's a chance our opposition may not paying attention if I break from the group to run back and get it (the omnipresent AI director would be less sympathetic).

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Valve has thrown the switch and released Left 4 Dead to the waiting hordes of Steam users eager to get cracking on the PC version.

Valve has bundled a whopping Complete Pack of games together on Steam for a quite ridiculous discount price.

Valve has unleashed PC and Xbox 360 demos of Left 4 Dead.

Valve has patched the PC demo of Left 4 Dead to remove split-screen play, which could be activated by plugging in an Xbox 360 controller and typing a short console command.

Internet boffins have hacked the PC Left 4 Dead demo to allow players to control the Infected, or zombies as we call them.

Valve plans to release PC and Xbox 360 demos of Left 4 Dead on Tuesday 11th November.

Valve has announced that Steam Cloud will launch this week.

Steam Cloud, announced at the end of May, centralises configuration data online so that you can access your controller and multiplayer settings (like spraypaint images for Counter-Strike) from any computer.

In future, Valve intends to centralise save-game data - the idea being that you could delete a Steam game and all its files and still be able to pick it up from the same spot, on any computer, years later.

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First things first, apologies if you were disappointed, having read our Eurogamer Expo preview on Monday, to discover that the MotorStorm: Pacific Rift vehicle outside the Expo entrance was a monster truck instead of a Humvee. We are also sorry that so many of you missed the chance to touch Bertie's moustache, which endures even now atop the sweater-clad granite torso and arms of news-typing sultriness.

Valve has begun taking PC pre-orders for co-operative zombie shooter Left 4 Dead, ahead of the 18th November launch on Steam.

Valve plans to offer a demo of Left 4 Dead "shortly before release", which is 18th November on Steam and 21st November in shops.

Left 4 Dead has been delayed for a couple more weeks according to Valve boss Gabe Newell.

EA has told Eurogamer that Left 4 Dead will be out in Europe on 7th November.

The organisers of QuakeCon have said that registration for this year's bonanza will begin on 30th April.

Remember the last time someone tried to make an online co-op zombie shooter? I wouldn't blame you if you'd forgotten, because it was absolute arse, to be blunt. Capcom, of all people, managed to botch it up so spectacularly back in 2004 that the survival element of the horror was sheer toleration.

Valve has confirmed that it has no plans for a PS3 version of Left 4 Dead.

Not content with talking to them about TF2 maps during a recent visit, Valve has gone blathering to Shacknews about Left 4 Dead's release date, which is now "late summer". Presumably on both PC and Xbox 360, for which it's been announced.

You won't be shocked, but Valve has announced the acquisition of Turtle Rock Studios.

Valve Corporation expects to continue working with Electronic Arts once it's shipped The Orange Box in October.

There are 2,000 PCs sitting in a room next door. Their 2,000 owners have carted them from as far away as Russia, and probably further. Sitting outside QuakeCon's host hotel, the Hilton Anatole in Dallas, attendees tell stories of taking PCs onto planes as hand luggage, and driving five in a car for as long as it took me to get to QuakeCon from London. So it's quite impressive that a seemingly endless stream of them would rather queue up for two hours to play Left 4 Dead.

Left 4 Dead won't be released until next year on either PC or Xbox 360, Valve has told Eurogamer.

Valve is approaching a "pretty big milestone". Chet Faliszek calls it "lockdown". It sounds like a big deal. Remembering back to the summer of 2003, when "September 30th" was starting to rust, I feel suddenly uncomfortable about effectively downsizing Valve by eight people for three crucial hours of team-based online zombie duckshoot. Oh well, it's their funeral. "We're pretty fickle gamers here, especially since we don't have much time to play games, and it's not hard to get people to play Left 4 Dead," says Erik Johnson.

We recently visited the beautiful (alright, ugly, rainy and boring) city of Bellevue, Washington, just across the water from Seattle. Not to take advantage of the exchange rate, you understand, but to pay homage to the mighty Valve Software and take a look at a project it's been working on with sometime Counter-Strike developer, and AI specialist, Turtle Rock Studios. The game in question is Left 4 Dead, a fast-paced, co-operative, survival horror FPS, and we pretty much loved it - check out our first impressions.

When a company like Valve tells you it thinks it has the next Counter-Strike on its hands, you pay attention. Counter-Strike was - and is - an incredibly long-lived global online gaming phenomenon, despite originating as a shoestring amateur mod of the original Half-Life. Valve turns championing the little man into big business, so when the Seattle super-developer invited us to visit and play the fruits of its collaboration with Turtle Rock Studios - a tiny team responsible for AI bots and map design in recent versions of Counter-Strike - we jumped at the chance.

Multiplayer zombie murder in November.