Though Left 4 Dead 2 is slated to arrive on PC and Xbox 360 November 17th, developer Valve has reaffirmed that it will continue to support the original edition of its cooperative zombie shooter with exclusive downloadable content.
"More info will be coming shortly on the [Left 4 Dead 1] DLC," Valve's Chet Faliszek told Shacknews, adding that the DLC will come in addition to enhancements, such as the promised team-based matchmaking update for the first Left 4 Dead. "We plan to keep supporting Left 4 Dead 1," Valve marketing VP Doug Lombardi recently told CVG. "I think folks took our [E3] announcement [of Left 4 Dead 2] as a sign that we were dropping Left 4 Dead 1 and that's just not the case."
Lombardi also noted that "there will be some announcements coming before summer's out about what's coming there," explaining that the internet's vocal opposition to Left 4 Dead 2 and the subsequent boycott "really didn't change our plans at all." Despite that backlash and 37,335-member strong boycott against Left 4 Dead 2, Lombardi informed Eurogamer that "pre-orders are currently double what they were for Left 4 Dead 1 at this point in time away from launch."
"Once everything's been out for a while and everyone's had time to see the complete product of Left 4 Dead 2 and see continued support for Left 4 Dead 1, they may sort of see what we were up to and what the method of our madness was there," he told CVG. Valve is "still looking at other ways to make the [Left 4 Dead] community cohesive in an elegant fashion," with the recent L4D mod tools allowing user-created content to be played in both PC releases, but hasn't "nailed down all the final details on that just yet."
The studio further confirmed plans to provide a pre-release multiplayer demo of Left 4 Dead 2, much like it did with the PC and Xbox 360 original. "With Left 4 Dead in particular we've found that word of mouth really is the strongest thing," Lombardi told OXM. "With Left 4 Dead 2 we plan to do a demo before the game comes out that'll have multiplayer in it. And hopefully we can continue the free weekends with the full game post-launch."
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