With Left 4 Dead 2 out this week (review coming soon!), the notorious boycott of Valve’s zombie apocalypse sequel is all but forgotten. Even so, Valve has been reflecting on the incident with Videogamer.com, talking about how it was like a “fight inside the family” and how they never wanted it to become an “us versus them” struggle like the gaming media (myself included, because it was great fun) did.
“But it was more like a fight inside the family,” explains writer Chet Faliszek. “We have 3.5 million people playing Left 4 Dead 1. 40,000 said something. They are passionate about our games. They play our games. So we always take the feedback seriously, because we’re gamers as well, and these are people who are playing our games and will probably play our games with us. So we always want to make sure we’re listening and understanding the issues.
“… But honestly, that’s fair, because I don’t expect everyone to know the whole history of Valve. I don’t expect anyone to know who I am. I don’t expect anyone to know who Gabe is. I don’t expect them to have played Half-Life. That would be arrogant to think that people know us that well.”
Chet also talks about the E3 reveal that first soured gamer expectations: ” … There are always refinements we always do, and we always knew we were going to have all this. But you’ve got to show the game at some point, and that’s what we did. We knew when we were first showing it that it was good and that we would be at this place now and be happy.”
Left 4 Dead 2 hits stores on Tuesday and while I’m not allowed to say much about it right now, I can tell you one thing — if you liked the first one, you want this.
