Left 4 Dead 2

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.

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.

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.

The Xbox One's backwards compatible list has just been bolstered by Left 4 Dead 2.

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.

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

When Lethal Weapon 3 got its cinematic release in 1992, my parents dutifully went along to the cinema to watch it. At the end of the credits, they were delighted to discover, there was one last scene - an easter egg to reward those who watched all those names scroll past on the screen. So began an excruciating family tradition.

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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Valve has released an update for the Australian censored version of Left 4 Dead 2 on Steam so it will now include all the cut content.

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

Valve's in-the-works Source 2 engine appears to have been unmasked by a set of images from a next-gen Left 4 Dead 2 prototype.

Valve sent out 300 prototypes of its Steam Machine on Friday, and it didn't take long for beta testers to post videos of the hardware.

UPDATE: Valve has revealed that it's planning three announcements next week. There's even a countdown site and everything. This Linux-based hardware is one, but that doesn't account for the other two.

"The Steam universe is expanding in 2014," the company cryptically teased. "Last year, we shipped a software feature called Big Picture, a user-interface tailored for televisions and gamepads. This year we've been working on even more ways to connect the dots for customers who want Steam in the living-room. Soon, we'll be adding you to our design process, so that you can help us shape the future of Steam."

What else could Valve be planning?

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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.

UPDATE: Capcom has revealed the first footage of the Resident Evil 6 and Left 4 Dead 2 crossover in action.

Survivors and Special Infected Zombies mode includes Coach, Nick, Ellis and Rochelle as playable characters, while The Witch and Mini Tank appear as enemies.

ORIGINAL STORY:

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We've all got lost in games. I don't mean that we've become so engrossed that external factors cease to matter - toast burns, cats starve, love falters, etc - although if you're reading this site then that's probably true as well. I mean we've gotten lost in games. It used to be a common complaint, in fact, that games spun you around or suddenly stopped saying new things and it would take ages to figure out what you were expected to do.

The Left 4 Dead 2 Workshop has moved out of beta, Valve has announced.

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.

Update: The beta for Steam for Linux will include Serious Sam 3: BFE, Portal and Team Fortress 2, noted Serious Sam developer Croteam on it Facebook page.

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.

The Australian games industry has given a mixed response to the long awaited guidelines for the new R18+ rating which covers games with adult content.

Does Steam selling games with DRM in the free and open source environment of GNU/Linux defeat the entire point?

Before you can use Steam, you must agree to Steam's terms. And those terms - the Steam Subscriber Agreement and Valve's Privacy Policy - have been updated.

Valve has also opened a new office in Luxembourg to better serve its European audience with. Nice place, Luxembourg - has a population of half-a-million and a capital city named Luxembourg.

The most significant change to the Steam terms concerns taking Valve to court over a dispute.

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Delayed Left 4 Dead 2 add-on Cold Stream will finally launch for Xbox 360 this Friday, developer Valve has announced.

The download will cost 560 Microsoft Points (about £4.76).

"We are set for the title update and the Cold Stream DLC to be released this Friday," Valve posted on Twitter last night.

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

The long-awaited Left 4 Dead 2 Cold Stream DLC has launched on PC and Mac, but it has been delayed on Xbox 360 to next week.

Steam is coming to Linux, Valve has announced. The first game available will be Left 4 Dead 2.

Left 4 Dead's Cold Stream DLC is out later this month on Xbox 360 and PC, Valve has announced.

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

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

Full Steam support is on its way to open source PC operating system Linux later this year, according to OS evangelist Michael Larabel.

Upcoming Valve games Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive will support the Razer Hydra PC motion controller.

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

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.

Left 4 Dead 2's forthcoming Cold Stream DLC expansion is open for PC and Mac beta testing now, publisher Valve has announced.

Next time you boot the game up you should notice the new addition to the campaign list. Valve wants you to take a look and then offer feedback and bug reports via the add-on's official forum. The finale in particular demands your attention as that is set to "change massively" following the beta.

First announced last month, Cold Stream started life as a community campaign created by modder Matthew Lourdelet. It caught the eye of the folks at Valve who then decided to jump in, buff it up and give it a full release.

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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."

Co-op zombie kill-em-up Left 4 Dead 2 will enjoy new downloadable content, Valve has announced – but there's a twist.

Cold Stream is an in the works community campaign created by modder Matthew Lourdelet. Valve is so impressed, it wants it finished and chucked into DLC. But it wants the L4D community's help.

"The very first step in creating a new DLC is deciding on the larger goals and constraints for the DLC," wrote Valve on the Left 4 Dead blog.

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Like many people, I've been been playing a lot of Black Ops lately. A little too much, perhaps. When you smear yourself in camo paint and start looking for decent camping spots on your way to the bus stop, you know you're overdoing it.

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 updated the PC version of Left 4 Dead 2 with a few small changes intended to stop players "rage quitting".

They are the start of a response to a recent request for players' feedback on what was frustrating them about the game. "We have many more changes we are working on, some ideas failed, some were exploitable, and some were just bad ideas," Valve said on the Left 4 Dead 2 blog.

"What we are releasing today is not the sum of our answer to the problem but simply some of the updates that are ready to ship. More are coming."

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Left 4 Dead 2 mutation "Realism Versus" has become a permanent fixture for the game.

Valve has released the first weekly "mutation" for Left 4 Dead 2's The Passing DLC, adding a new time-limited gameplay mode to the game.

Valve has announced that Left 4 Dead 2 downloadable add-on The Passing will be released for PC and Xbox 360 this Thursday, 22nd April.

Microsoft's Inside Xbox team has revealed that Left 4 Dead 2 add-on The Passing will cost 560 Microsoft Points (£4.76 / €6.72) when it comes out.

Valve has said to expect "new game modes" in The Passing DLC for Left 4 Dead 2, which is now listed as "spring" rather than March.

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.

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's stance on developing for PlayStation 3 may have softened, judging by comments from Left 4 Dead 2 developer Chet Faliszek last week.

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

Valve's working on a couple of tweaks to the Versus side of Left 4 Dead 2.

The organisers of the Game Developers Conference have announced that Valve co-founder Gabe Newell is to receive the event's Pioneer Award this March.

Silver members of Xbox Live will be able to experience Left 4 Dead 2 multiplayer next weekend for free.

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

Valve has announced that the first downloadable add-on for Left 4 Dead 2 will be called The Passing and is due out in spring 2010 for PC and Xbox 360.

Pricing will be announced "closer to launch".

The Passing is set in rural Georgia just after L4D2's Dead Center campaign and brings the current team of survivors together with the foursome from the first game.

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Valve has put out a patch that addresses a long list of bugs in Left 4 Dead 2, the brilliant co-operative zombie-splatting shooter released earlier this year.

There are changes to hit boxes - the mesh area surrounding a monster that registers hits - and tweaks to the controls of Special Infected. You'll be able to spin the camera when attacked by a Charger or a Smoker, and ghost placement rules have been altered in Scavenge mode.

It's a sum-of-its-parts patch, which is why I've been lazy and pasted the list below.

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Nintendo wrestled dominance of the Japanese hardware market back from Sony this week, launching its new DSi LL to enviable success.

Valve reckons it has eliminated latency issues with the Xbox 360 version of Left 4 Dead 2 following a series of tech changes.

Neither Assassin's Creed II nor New Super Mario Bros. Wii have managed to displace Modern Warfare 2 at the top of the UK All-Formats chart, despite Activision's champion selling 86 per cent fewer copies during its second week on sale.

Valve has set up a website dedicated to the Midnight Riders, the rock band whose light show saves the day in Left 4 Dead 2's Dark Carnival campaign.

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.

EA's attempt to release an unedited version of Left 4 Dead 2 in Australia failed because the censors thought the game was too realistic and that some enemies looked a bit too much like real humans.

"Attaching laser sights to your weapon makes it more accurate." Yeah right. Actually, I have no idea whether attaching laser sights to your weapon in Left 4 Dead 2 makes it more accurate. It's hard to verify, even after you've shot 7500 zombies during your first day playing it. But attaching laser sights to your weapon certainly makes it look cool.

The laser sights aren't the best thing in Left 4 Dead 2. When you first encounter them halfway through the opening campaign, Dead Center, they're not even the best thing in that room - the man who wants you to go across the road and get him some Cola is. But they are symbolic of a broader change to a game that looked to some like a cash-in: whereas Left 4 Dead was about getting people to co-operate, and a nervous Valve was reluctant to complicate things in case people misunderstood, Left 4 Dead 2 is about making the most of the fact people did get it, by having some fun with the concept. Because people really, really did get it.

On the off chance you didn't play the original, Left 4 Dead 2 is a first-person shooter designed for four players to play together. You pick from one of four characters, choose a campaign and then work with one another to survive the zombie apocalypse the game unloads between the starting point and the last chopper out of town.

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Valve has said that the PC version of Left 4 Dead 2 will be available from Steam at 5am GMT tomorrow, 17th November.

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

Xbox Live Gold subscribers and PC owners can download the Left 4 Dead 2 demo today.

The Valve man takes all your questions.

Faliszek talks through L4D2 campaign.

Valve has announced that if you pre-order Left 4 Dead 2 on PC you will gain access to Bill's hat in Team Fortress 2.

Valve's Chet Faliszek has told Eurogamer that Left 4 Dead 2 will reward Xbox 360 players with Avatar clothing for accomplishing certain things.

"Yeah, so, in Left 4 Dead 2 on the 360 you can actually win - it's called Awards. It's this weird thing that we thought people had done already, and we started working on it and then, once we started talking about it, realised that no one knew what we were talking about," explained Faliszek.

"They're like Achievements, where you do some activity and you win something for your Avatar. You can unlock a Depeche Mode t-shirt or Left 4 Dead 2 t-shirt or the health kits or other cool stuff. You can't have weapons, but all the other stuff is from the game."

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I'm in! Popular man, Mr Chet Faliszek from Valve. The queue outside is so big they had to start turning people away ages ago.

Alongside the new Assassin's Creed and Modern Warfare sequels, Valve's Left 4 Dead 2 must surely rank as one of the most highly anticipated games of the year for Xbox 360 users. Currently only available as a bonus to US customers who pre-ordered the game, we've managed to procure the Xbox 360 demo and subjected it to the usual battery of performance tests. This is the first time the Digital Foundry channel has seen the game running, and overall impressions are very positive indeed.

The demo itself is a decently-sized sampling of what is to come. Weighing in at a hefty 1.6GB, the download offers up two levels of The Parish to work through along with online and single-player gameplay. Similar to the first game, the CPU takes control of your three companions in the absence of any human companions. You get to sample a range of firearms, incendiaries like Molotov cocktails and pipebombs, plus the much-vaunted melee weapons. Realistically there's between 20 to 30 minutes play-time, which we've edited down a bit for this six minutes of frame-rate analysis.

From a technical perspective, frame-rate is essentially fairly solid (30FPS with a few caveats), and, similar to previous games running on the Source engine, we're looking at a v-synced 720p with no anti-aliasing. To smooth off edges a touch, a subtle blur filter has been added. These post-processing effects rarely look that great but here it works in concert with a well-implemented camera motion blur and isn't so distracting. On the plus side, texture filtering is a decent combination of trilinear with a good level of anisotropic filtering.

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With the PC pre-order demo of Left 4 Dead 2 now available in addition to the Xbox 360 one, eager beavers on the Steam forums have pulled it apart and apparently unearthed the prospect of Avatar rewards in the full game.

Valve has said that the Left 4 Dead 2 demo is now available to those who pre-ordered the game on Xbox 360, and that the PC version will follow today via Steam.

Valve will offer early access to the Left 4 Dead 2 demo tomorrow to anybody who has pre-ordered the game on Steam.

Valve has laid out pre-order and general release timings for the Left 4 Dead 2 demo.

They're soon, but not as soon as the Eurogamer Expo, where you'll be able to play L4D2 co-operatively within touching difference of your friends. Leeds and London are the locations. The cost: just six quid. The EG Expo mini-site has the scoop. But buy quick; ticket sales are accelerating.

PC owners win, as the pre-order (Steam, participating retailers) demo goes live on 27th October, with open access following on 3rd November.

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Valve has confirmed that Dead Center and Hard Rain are a pair of campaigns from Left 4 Dead 2 following yesterday's leak.

"They are from the game," marketing director Doug Lombardi confirmed to Eurogamer in an email.

Elsewhere, the game's Achievement list has popped up (thanks Kotaku), also mentioning the campaigns, and offering a glimpse not only of the way Valve plans to keep you coming back, but perhaps also a few unannounced bits and pieces.

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EA has told Eurogamer that PlayStation 3 listings for Left 4 Dead 2 and Mass Effect 2 were posted to the publisher's Russian website in error. They've since been removed.

A Taiwanese website appears to have uncovered the posters - and therefore names and witty slogans - for the last of Left 4 Dead 2's five campaigns.

Valve has announced the new fourth game mode for Left 4 Dead 2 - Scavenge.

Scavenge is a round-based competitive multiplayer game for up to eight players, where a team of survivors attempts to collect and transport gas canisters to a generator somewhere on the map while a team of infected tries to stop them.

Each gas can brought to the generator adds a bit more time to the clock, which is ever ticking down, and scores the survivors' team a point. After three rounds each playing as both survivors and infected, the winner is the team with the most points.

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Round-based quick-fire multiplayer.

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.

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

One of the greatest pleasures provided by recent Valve games has been the option to play through them again with the developers' commentary enabled, accessing the team's comments by nudging little speech bubbles dotted around the worlds of Portal, Episode Two and even Team Fortress 2. As anyone's who had the pleasure of reading through Raising the Bar will tell you, these guys know a thing or two about guiding you around a complex world and getting you to enjoy it for the reasons they intended.

It's early September in Seattle, Washington, and on every television channel, the Republican Party and the health insurance lobby are teaming up to murder the plucky British NHS in wall-to-wall attack adverts. Meanwhile, on a series of HD displays in Valve's Bellevue offices, Tom Bramwell, Eurogamer editor, and Chet Faliszek ("F as in Frank, A-L-I-S, Z as in Zebra, E-K," he says with a practiced efficiency), ostensibly a writer at Valve although I suspect he does a lot more besides, are teaming up all by themselves to murder waves of infected, while I wait patiently for my rescue behind a locked door somewhere in the distance, having been covered in bright green acidic goop by a Spitter, and then ridden off a cliff rather abruptly by a Jockey.

Unlike the movie and music industries, which leave you in no doubt you're watching a McG picture or listening to a Lady GaGa record (and in my case leave me wondering why), videogames haven't always been great about acknowledging the people who deserve the most credit.

Valve today revealed the third of five campaigns for Left 4 Dead 2, Dark Carnival, and Eurogamer popped round to the firm's Bellevue office to try it out.

You must be this tall... TO DIE!

Valve has shown the first footage of the Fairgrounds campaign coming to Left 4 Dead 2.

Well, it's that time again - more top quality titles have been announced for the Eurogamer Expo and, like some kind of cross between Gareth Barry and an BidUp TV infomercial, we're passing the facts on to you with unerring accuracy.

Chet Faliszek has said that Valve was baffled by complaints on the Houston Chronicle website recently about "racist undertones" in Left 4 Dead 2.

In an unlikely licensing twist, eighties synth-pop survivors Depeche Mode are collaborating with Valve on Left 4 Dead 2.

In an ironic twist to the friction between Valve and its fans over Left 4 Dead 2, a player who's part of the group boycotting the sequel came up with an idea similar to the new Spitter infected months before it was unveiled last week.

Valve has shown off the promised Swamp Fever campaign at Comic-Con in San Diego, revealing new infected types along the way.

Valve has announced that it plans to unveil Swamp Fever, the second of Left 4 Dead 2's five campaigns, at the San Diego Comic-Con later this month.

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

Valve will reward people who pre-order Left 4 Dead 2 with early access to a multiplayer demo.

Look left for our latest hands-on.

It might be all strawberries and cream and sunshine at Wimbledon, but the only summer sport we were interested in this week was a game of mixed zombie doubles in a dingy, dimly-lit tunnel beneath a railway bridge in London. Undead beats Fed every time.

Valve has told Eurogamer that pre-orders for Left 4 Dead 2 are twice what they were at this stage last time, despite the internet backlash and boycott threats.

It's hardly normal for fans to become enraged by the announcement that a best-selling game is getting a sequel sooner than expected, but Valve has never been a normal videogame developer. When Left 4 Dead 2 was announced at this year's E3, the community was divided between those who were more than happy to fight the horde afresh in sunny New Orleans, and those concerned that a company synonymous with free DLC was about to cut its recent multiplayer crowd-pleaser loose less than a year after its release. (At least everybody agreed that smacking the undead around with a frying pan was probably a positive development.) We sat down with Doug Lombardi, Valve's vice president of marketing, to talk about the past and future of the Left 4 Dead franchise, the perils and perks of procedural pacing, and how the company makes all of its games "inside-out".

Valve boss Gabe Newell has told concerned fans that Left 4 Dead support has not been scrapped to focus on the sequel, and promised that mod tools, community matchmaking, 4x4 matchmaking and more content for L4D1 would be released "during the coming months".

Over 15,000 Left 4 Dead fans have joined together on Steam to campaign against and boycott the release of Left 4 Dead 2.

They claim Valve has not fulfilled promises of extra content for L4D, and that the announced innards of L4D2 do "not warrant a standalone, fully-priced sequel".

Their Steam community page (picked up by vg247) requests that Valve "honour" its original commitment to ongoing periodic content for L4D, that the sequel become a free update or that existing L4D owners be given a discount.

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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 has said that Left 4 Dead 2's Xbox 360 console exclusivity has more to do with the developer's background than anything else.

You can usually rely on Valve to do the unexpected, even if the unexpected is exactly what you'd expect any other developer to do. Valve isn't known for its haste in following up successful games, and you might have thought it was high time for more Counter-Strike, never mind Half-Life or Portal. But with Left 4 Dead recently reissued in a Game of the Year Edition and still selling like shotgun shells in a zombie apocalypse, Valve has uncharacteristically decided to strike while the iron is red hot.

It's coming to PC and Xbox 360 on 17th November, and, thanks to our pals at Rock, Paper, Shotgun, we now know plenty about Left 4 Dead 2.

PC and 360 on 17th November.

Microsoft just showed off Crackdown 2 and Left 4 Dead 2 at its E3 conference and said both were exclusive to Xbox 360.