'Left 4 Dead 2' Update: Community Partners With Valve For Long-Awaited DLC

When a community that has been waiting for what seems like an eternity for a DLC pack comes together, the results can be stunning.

That is exactly what the community of “Left 4 Dead” gamers did when they came up with a DLC that they produced nearly eight years after the last one was made for the zombie co-op favorite “Left 4 Dead 2.”

Called “The Last Stand,” this DLC has been released Thursday and is the first update for “Left 4 Dead 2” since 2012’s “Cold Stream.” And it is no rushed job by any means.

There are 20 new survival arenas, four new scavenge arenas, as well as a campaign based on The Lighthouse survival map. If that’s not enough, “The Last Stand” comes with 30 new achievements, animation, melee weapons, dialogue, and adjustments for competitive balance.

To be clear, the 30 members of the “Left 4 Dead” community didn’t create this in a vacuum. Eurogamer reports that they partnered with game designers Valve over the course of 11 months to create content for the game that was first released for Windows and Xbox 360 back in November 2009. It was later released on Mac OS and Linux.

With no PlayStation 3 release, it’s then easy to see why Valve President Gabe Newell touted the Xbox Series X as better than the PlayStation 5 this past July.

Set during a zombie apocalypse, “Left 4 Dead 2” focuses on four survivors fighting against zombies known as “The Infected,” who develop severe psychosis and act unusually aggressive. As a survivor, you must battle through five campaigns with safehouses acting as checkpoints.

As a first-person shooter, “Left 4 Dead 2” also placed a lot of emphasis on cooperative gameplay, which translated into the online community that the game spawned.

After celebrating its 10th year in November 2019, writer Jordan Oloman wrote to “Left 4 Dead 2” creators Valve about why it continues to be popular after a decade.

“As you're seeking out that elusive perfect score and being added to rage quit Steam groups, you'll notice it feels as spry as it was in 2009," Oloman wrote. "Somehow it still hasn't fallen out of the top 100 games played on the platform, averaging around 10,000 players a day."

It hasn’t been all good news for Valve, however, as in July, they discussed several canceled projects including “Left 4 Dead 3.” What would have been an open-world take on the zombie apocalypse was canceled after being built on the Source 2 engine, which remains unfinished,

Luckily for them, their community picked up the pieces and the result is “The Last Stand.”