Update: Left 4 Dead 2 Is Free On Steam, Merry Christmas!

[Shadow-Phoenix]

That explained as to why I couldn't gift my friends any of the games I'd bought for hours, all thanks to a game that's been out for years to be free for a day...

But hey Valve worshippers will somehow bash me and claim it's the best thing ever since sliced bread and how my pouring money into the company means fuck all when I can't do anything with what I'd bought.

 

[Living_Brain]

You know Steam was pretty much zerg rushed for the past two days, right?

Steam's servers were absolutely slammed yesterday, since so many people were downloading L4D2. The store was down for about six hours.

Guess I was just lucky that as I downloaded L4D2 at the same time I had no issues at all.

 

[Vigormortis]

Thanks for the replies and the offer!
L4D is far down under a rather large backlog pile however, so I doubt I'll get around to play it anytime soon. :/

You're welcome.

I can appreciate having a backlog of titles to get to. I've got my own that I still need to find time to play. Especially after this years last two holiday sales.

But I would add that Left 4 Dead isn't necessarily one of those games that you need devote long hours to.[footnote]Unless you plan to delve deep into Versus.[/footnote] It's one of those "play a match or two every now and then" kind of games. And hey, you never know... Left 4 Dead could become a favorite once you try it.

 

[Poetic Nova]

Would've never added it to my library if it wasn't free. Can't look a given horse in it's mouth.

 

[BoredAussieGamer]

To everyone still complaining about how the first one is "objectively superior" and whining about that not being given out for free, here's a scenario to think about.

Someone is giving out free apples. There is nothing wrong with these apples, there is no sinister ulterior motive, this person is just giving out free apples for the sake of being nice.
Here are two reasonable options in this situation:

1: You accept the free apple and act gratefully.
2: You politely decline for whatever reasons you may have (not hungry, already possessing a great deal of apples, preferring oranges)

Both of those are perfectly acceptable.

However, YOU DO NOT ***** AND MOAN ABOUT HOW ORANGES ARE THE SUPERIOR FRUIT AND COMPLAIN THAT THOSE AREN'T BEING OFFERED FOR FREE!

 

[Quellist]

Anyone calling the L4D2 characters Bland clearly hasn't listened to Ellis' stories about his buddy Keith. I spat food hearing some of those.

Seriously to all the haters, its a free game, whats to hate about that?

It's a horrible game? Just because it's free doesn't automatically mean it's good.

Horrible game? Really? i'm sad you think so. Ive had a lot of fun with this game and so have my friends, i can see some people might not like it or the concept but to call it horrible? i dont think thats reasonable, what makes it so awful exactly?

 

[gnihton]

To everyone still complaining about how the first one is "objectively superior" and whining about that not being given out for free, here's a scenario to think about.

Someone is giving out free apples. There is nothing wrong with these apples, there is no sinister ulterior motive, this person is just giving out free apples for the sake of being nice.
Here are two reasonable options in this situation:

1: You accept the free apple and act gratefully.
2: You politely decline for whatever reasons you may have (not hungry, already possessing a great deal of apples, preferring oranges)

Both of those are perfectly acceptable.

However, YOU DO NOT ***** AND MOAN ABOUT HOW ORANGES ARE THE SUPERIOR FRUIT AND COMPLAIN THAT THOSE AREN'T BEING OFFERED FOR FREE!

Except that there is a sinister motive, because this person is trying to promote their apple store and distract you from the far superior apple store that has been sitting around in atrophy for years on end.

For those that don't know, for some reason Valve take every opportunity to promote L4D2 and just leave L4D1 behind, L4D2 constantly has ridiculous sales and promotions like this, while the first doesn't.

It seems pretty obvious to me that they're trying to keep L4D2 up in popularity and lure people away from L4D1 because they think a third game would only be viable if L4D2 stays popular, and people sticking to the original undermines their attempts to make it into a franchise.

 

[chozo_hybrid]

To everyone still complaining about how the first one is "objectively superior" and whining about that not being given out for free, here's a scenario to think about.

Someone is giving out free apples. There is nothing wrong with these apples, there is no sinister ulterior motive, this person is just giving out free apples for the sake of being nice.
Here are two reasonable options in this situation:

1: You accept the free apple and act gratefully.
2: You politely decline for whatever reasons you may have (not hungry, already possessing a great deal of apples, preferring oranges)

Both of those are perfectly acceptable.

However, YOU DO NOT ***** AND MOAN ABOUT HOW ORANGES ARE THE SUPERIOR FRUIT AND COMPLAIN THAT THOSE AREN'T BEING OFFERED FOR FREE!

Except that there is a sinister motive, because this person is trying to promote their apple store and distract you from the far superior apple store that has been sitting around in atrophy for years on end.

For those that don't know, for some reason Valve take every opportunity to promote L4D2 and just leave L4D1 behind, L4D2 constantly has ridiculous sales and promotions like this, while the first doesn't.

It seems pretty obvious to me that they're trying to keep L4D2 up in popularity and lure people away from L4D1 because they think a third game would only be viable if L4D2 stays popular, and people sticking to the original undermines their attempts to make it into a franchise.

It (being L4D1) being superior is subject to opinion, yes, it has been on sale a lot, the first was a few times before the second came out. The rest of what you posted post seems to be made up of a lot of speculation to make the second game sound bad because you don't like it (I assume, since it seems you don't seem to like it, I could be wrong.).

 

[bafrali]

snip

Please go on. With any luck, we will find a connection to the assasination of a high profile politician in recent history. I always knew free to play was a grim idea but apperantly it is doing more than killing my time. Who knew?

 

[bafrali]

snip

You don't need to point out that third game is in the works. We already know it is in the works. What is hilarious is that you think Valve is trying to keep one game down to promote the other. I think we both know who needs to get off the internet and here is a hint. It is the one with a far fetched conspiracy theory.

I should also point out that my post was supposed to be sarcasm in case it didn't get through.

 

[gnihton]

snip

You don't need to point out that third game is in the works. We already know it is in the works. What is hilarious is that you think Valve is trying to keep one game down to promote the other. I think we both know who needs to get off the internet and here is a hint. It is the one with a far fetched conspiracy theory.

I should also point out that my post was supposed to be sarcasm in case it didn't get through.

Wow, so you even agree with me up to that point, but apparently declaring that a game company's marketing department is doing something silly is new and far-fetched.

You're really grasping at straws to try and sound right now, aren't you.

 

[chozo_hybrid]

snip

Please go on. With any luck, we will find a connection to the assasination of a high profile politician in recent history. I always knew free to play was a grim idea but apperantly it is doing more than killing my time. Who knew?

Right, me pointing out that it's quite obvious that Valve want to make a third game is equivalent with a conspiracy theory, despite the fact that I'm pretty sure they've actually said that in an interview sometime around the release of L4D2.

I think you've had too much internet for the day, go to bed.

It (being L4D1) being superior is subject to opinion, yes, it has been on sale a lot, the first was a few times before the second came out. The rest of what you posted post seems to be made up of a lot of speculation to make the second game sound bad because you don't like it (I assume, since it seems you don't seem to like it, I could be wrong.).

This is the height of some fallacy, I literally didn't say anything negative about L4D2 other than that the first was better.

How do you go from me saying that they're trying to make it into an on-going franchise to "the game is terrible". People on this website are so fucking paranoid/irrational.

What fallacy? I even put in brackets that was I was saying was an assumption and could be wrong about you not liking it, in case I was. You mentioned them being all sinister (which frames it negatively I might add) about promoting this one over the superior one, it would be easy for someone to assume you don't like it, chill out. I'm more then willing to accept when I'm wrong, I even did in my original post to you.

 

[Sarge034]

All I can see in your post is "I sucked at the game so I don't like it".

Did you bother to read the conversation chain? No? You might want to do that before you go making these types of statements. Also, a free turd is still a turd.

 

[Muspelheim]

You know what would really be cool? If they gave out L4D for free. You know, the GOOD one.

As somebody who isn't the hugest fan of the series, why is the first one regarded as so much better than the second? I though they even added all the original campaigns to the second as DLC? What makes the first one better?

Legs. Beautiful legs.

Dey tewk mah leygs, gawdamit!!

 

[viranimus]

Not doing my normal anti steam thing. Looking at it objectively I kinda feel that Steams gift to their customers this year seems a little underwhelming. Most likely because it feels like it was outdone when GoG gave away Fallout1, 2 & Tactics.

Spoiler: L4D2

L4D2 is an internal IP with technically minimal loss to the company.
It is arguably inferior (I personally disagree as I prefer 2) to its predecessor.
It is a single game, albeit it with heavy focus on multiplayer based replayability.

Vs

Spoiler: Fallout

The GoG fallout give away is two older, but very highly regarded classic games plus their awkward tag along cousin.

It is not their IP so invariably it has to technically cost them more to give away due to the IP holder taking their cut.

1&2 are arguably superior to their modern Bethesda reboots. (Not sure on this one because I havent and due to Isoview likely wont ever play them despite owning them for quite a while now)

Hypothetically the fallout games have a larger content footprint with the depth of the gameplay and narrative. Much of the total content and replayability of L4D2 comes from adding additional maps, and mods, but really all they normally do is just add new maps to repeat the same actions of moving forward from checkpoint to checkpoint to survive and limited narrative expansion.

Three is more than 1

Even though I know I likely will not play any of the three fallout games myself, It seems like to the player that the fallout offer simply gave more to the player overall when comparing the two. Good thing is if you are a customer of both, it is not like you had to chose so no comparison is really needed. Everyone wins. Really just elaborating why Steams offer just felt a little hollow by comparison.

Captcha: Plenty of time.
I guess your right Captcha, My time may well have been better spent on something else.

 

[ksn0va]

You know what would really be cool? If they gave out L4D for free. You know, the GOOD one.

Less "Merry Christmas" and more "F*ck you, guys!" in my opinion, as L4D1 Fan.

L4D is "the good one"? ...Considering that the entirety of L4D exists in L4D2, then how the fuck does that even work?

Entirely different gameplay? Maps and Characters alone don't make "the entire content", you know? And L4D2 has pretty much the opposite gameplay than L4D1.

Care to explain how they are opposites? They really don't feel that different,IMO, of course.

I guess some people just see sky blue and light blue as too big of a difference. There's a minority out there that are still bitter that Valve released a sequel too quickly, they kinda got used to Valve taking 10 years to release a sequel so L4D2 must've messed with the fabric of reality or something.