Think nobody plays Left 4 Dead 2 any more? You’d be surprised.
According to Steam’s stats page, Left 4 Dead 2 is still one of the 40 most-played games on the service every day. As of writing, the game had nearly 8000 concurrent players… on a random Wednesday afternoon. So yeah, thanks in part to things like a vibrant modding scene, the game’s still doing alright.
However, many of the undying co-op zombie/My Little Pony shooter’s players aren’t pleased with the game’s current state, as Valve’s official servers have been prone to long waits and disconnections ever since a recent update. It’s been about a week since people started reporting issues, and while some say they have yet to encounter particularly terrible problems, many are fed up. Players just want to hop into the game they have had easy access to for the past six years, which is not an unreasonable request. Valve, meanwhile, has yet to address the problem.
One player has taken a unique approach in their attempt to clear the twin fogs of time and zombies away from Left 4 Dead 2 — to force Valve to notice this urgent issue in one of their less talked about, still popular games. Ellie made a mod that replaces in-game propane tanks with — as they put it — “Shitty Steam Servers.” Here’s their explanation:
“After suffering from a 9th server crash this week, I had enough. Steam and Valve clearly don’t freakin’ care about L4D2 because they made all official server crash with their new stupid update for Steam Controller (who uses controller in a PC FPS like really).”
“This mod adds Steam Servers in game to replace the Propane Tanks, so you can blow dem’ ♥♥♥♥ers and give them at leas[t] one purpose.”
“VALVE, FIX YOUR SERVERS NOW.”
Pissed at floundering servers? Now you can blow them the fuck up. A bit over-the-top, but it certainly gets the message across: Left 4 Dead 2 has a problem, and players feel like Valve doesn’t give a crap. Knowing Valve, they probably do, but nobody’s handled it yet because of their horizontal company structure, or a lack of people working on L4D2 these days, or a handful of other reasons. I’ve reached out to Valve to find out exactly what’s going on.
In the meantime, do you still play Left 4 Dead 2? If so, have you been experiencing issues on official servers lately?
Comments
4 responses to “Pissed At Valve, Modder Lets Left 4 Dead Players Shoot At Virtual Steam Servers”
I got it for free when they were giving it away because I like the original and had played it at lans frequently. But by that time lans had become dota 2 affairs and nothing else so I never really played it . Couple months after I got it I gave it a few turns online in public matches but haven’t played it for over a year now.
Wait, L4D2 is 6 years old!? Do Valve even make games anymore?
I just went onto Wikipedia to check, and found this gem:
Half-Life 2: Episode Three, was originally scheduled to appear around Christmas 2007
Wow.
That boggles the mind.
I actually went back and tried to play HL2 on the 360 probably a year ago and I was shocked by how old it looked. I guess it really has been that long.
It’s so weird that a major license that’s guaranteed to make money, being held entirely by a company that’s financially stable, has been sat on for 8 years while people wait for the tremendously successful series to be finished.
What’s even weirder is that we don’t even hear rumours anymore, the series just vanished.
A few years ago I came to the conclusion that they were waiting for the new generation consoles so they could do a multiplatform release and do some crazy things that weren’t possible previously (probably involving a portal gun)….. but it’s been two years and no word.
Yeah, I thought they might have been waiting for the next-gen consoles too. I figured they could have been working on a new game engine; something to replace the aging Source engine, and they’d release a few games with it (Orange Box style) to really sell it. But alas; Source 2 was unveiled, but there were no new games with it.
I’m pretty sure it was Turtle Rock Studios that made the game, not Valve. Valve just bought them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_Rock_Studios
Turtle Rock did the first L4D, but not the second, Valve took dev duties on that one