Left 4 Dead DLC Announced

[divine]

Originally Posted by Valve PR

LEFT 4 DEAD CRITIC'S CHOICE EDITION, DLC AND SDK DETAILS REVEALED

Valve's Zombie Thriller Expanding In 2009

February 5, 2008 - Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Half-Life, Portal, Team Fortress, and Counter-Strike) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced a series of content and development releases for its latest title, 2008's best-selling new game property for the PC and Xbox 360, Left 4 Dead (L4D).

The first L4D DLC - dubbed the L4D Survival Pack -- is due for release this spring and introduces a new multiplayer game mode entitled, Survival, plus two complete campaigns for Versus Mode . A Critic's Choice Edition of the game is also heading to retail stores this spring, and will include access to all the content introduced in the L4D: Survival Pack.

In addition, for PC gamers and aspiring developers, the first Left 4 Dead release for the Source Software Development Kit (Source SDK) will allow the creation of custom Left 4 Dead campaigns that will be discoverable via L4D's matchmaking system. The SDK update is also due for release this spring, and is free of charge to all owners of L4D on the PC.

"Since Half-Life launched in 1998, Valve has made continuous efforts to expand the offering of its products beyond what's included on the day of launch," said Gabe Newell, co-founder and president of Valve. "With Half-Life and Counter-Strike, and more recently Team Fortress 2, we've learned that we're no longer making stand-alone games but creating entertainment services. With Left 4 Dead we're extending that tradition by creating additional gameplay and releasing our internal tools to aspiring developers so they may also create and distribute new Left 4 Dead experiences."

Left 4 Dead is a survival action game from Valve that blends the social entertainment experience of multiplayer games such as Counter-Strike and Team Fortress with the dramatic, narrative experience made popular in single player action game classics such as the Half-Life series of games. Released in November of 2008, L4D has earned over 25 industry awards from outlets around the world.
For more information, please visit www.l4d.com

Sounds like the SDK will be free but the official DLC probably won't be, else I imagine they would have mentioned so... that said, stuff like the updates to TF2 have been free, so we'll see.

edit - though I am hearing rumours they're staying a bit quiet on the topic because PC gamers might get it free and 360 owners will have to pay.

[NokkonWud]

I know it's getting charged for on Xbox360, so I'd expect it to be similar to the DLC for Fallout 3 in that PC users get charged too. The DLC was officially announced in 2008 though I believe.

The release of the SDK is definitely good news though.

[divine]

Originally Posted by NokkonWud

I know it's getting charged for on Xbox360, so I'd expect it to be similar to the DLC for Fallout 3 in that PC users get charged too. The DLC was officially announced in 2008 though I believe.

The release of the SDK is definitely good news though.

They announced there would be some, they'd not said what it would include until now though...

[NokkonWud]

Are you sure? We definitely knew about them adding the 2 campaigns to versus mode and I'm sure I read about Survival too?

Perhaps this was privvy to Xbox360 users?

[divine]

Possibly, that was a PR that was sent out today afaik.

I don't think anything had been previously confirmed, just speculated on. The two versus campaigns had been unofficially confirmed in interviews and was fairly obvious anyway seeing as they only did two of the four in the first place.

I'd not heard anything about Survival before though.

edit - quick google is only showing updates from today mentioning Survival mode...

[NokkonWud]

I thought it was mentioned on one of the XBox Live weekly videos called "SentUAMessage". I know they definitely confirmed the additional Versus mode maps. I'll check later.

[divine]

I stumbled across this from Newell earlier:

Will this DLC be free, like it is on the PC? I know that Microsoft insist on charging for DLC, but Criterion have managed to release all their DLC for free with Burnout Paradise, using patches. The same method was used for the Gears of War ‘Annex’ mode, so surely it must be possible?

The 360 has a distinction between Title Updates (TUs) and DLC. TUs are limited to 8 MB of code over the life of the product, and we blow through that pretty quickly with the amount of content that we release. DLC releases have to be two charged for each free release.

On the PC, of course, we release everything for free, which is what we prefer to do for our products and our customers.

It'll be very interesting to see how they play the charges, because historically it's something they've never really done, but clearly MS force it.

[NokkonWud]

Microsoft are notorious for doing it, they really annoyed Epic before when Epic wanted to give Gears of War content away.
Don't understand what "two charged for each free release", makes no sense. I have seen free DLC before though...

Edit: Survival wasn't named, but mentioned as a new scenario. It mentioned the updates to make the other two campaigns into Versus mode.

I know they will annoy a lot of people by charging to add two maps already in the game into Versus mode maps, so that's awkward to say the least as they should have been done before release.

[Aboobie]

Originally Posted by NokkonWud

Microsoft are notorious for doing it, they really annoyed Epic before when Epic wanted to give Gears of War content away.
Don't understand what "two charged for each free release", makes no sense. I have seen free DLC before though...

Edit: Survival wasn't named, but mentioned as a new scenario. It mentioned the updates to make the other two campaigns into Versus mode.

I know they will annoy a lot of people by charging to add two maps already in the game into Versus mode maps, so that's awkward to say the least as they should have been done before release.

The difference is MS published Gears and called the shots. If Valve want to not charge, like EA did with Burnout: Paradise then I don't think MS can do anything to stop them.

[divine]

He means for DLC, for MS to allow a free DLC release, they require you to put out 2 charged for ones as well.

'two charged for each free' basically just means every third DLC pack can be free.

That's how it reads to me anyway.

It wouldn't surprise me if Valve make a bit of a fuss to point out Microsoft force them to do it, to try and save face with their own customers. That, or they might try and be crafty and release 2 random skins for like 50p each that no one will bother with and have the proper DLC as the 'free' one.