Pre-order gifts are all the rage these days, and who is Valve to deny a trend? You may have heard that Left 4 Dead 2 will be offering an in-game treat to those who pre-order the sequel at select retailers, and that treat is an exclusive melee weapon, the baseball bat.

The bat will, apparently, not just be a re-skin of the cricket bat that is available to everybody in the game. It will have its own unique characteristics to make it a worthwhile and desirable brain-batterer. Quite how it will be different, I can't quite imagine, but it will be. Maybe it will be gold, like most pre-order goodies. 

The best part about the baseball bat is that it won't be so exclusive that you can't play the L4D2 with someone who has it. If someone without the weapon ends up in a game with someone who pre-ordered it, the baseball bat will be available to all. Yay Communism!

"How it'll work is, if you're playing with somebody that's pre-ordered it, everybody playing gets it," confirms Left 4 Dead writer Chet Faliszek. 

The baseball bat will be available in both the PC and Xbox 360 version of the game. I eagerly await the trendy Valve haters who will find a way to claim this is evil and bad somehow.

[Thanks, Liam]