Former Valve author Chet Faliszek has a confession to make: Valve deliberately leaked its personal Left 4 Useless 2 trailer.
The Half-Life and Portal veteran spilled the beans on the studio’s previous unconventional advertising and marketing techniques in a brand new video uploaded to his YouTube channel (through Ars Technica). Based mostly on his recounting of the Left 4 Useless 2 incident, Valve “leaked our trailer forward of time as a result of” the Leisure Software program Ranking Board (ESRB) “would not allow us to launch the trailer.”
So, why are we simply listening to about this now? Nicely, it has been a couple of years since any of this might have mattered.
“I believe we won’t get in hassle for that now. It was like 20 years in the past,” Faliszek mentioned. “It is humorous seeing leaked stuff now as a result of, yeah, I do not assume you possibly can search for ‘leaked Left 4 Useless 2 trailer’ as a result of it is simply going to be misplaced.”
Leaks can occur for quite a lot of causes. Generally corporations are hacked and have their content material spilled out onto the web; generally somebody says one thing they should not, and generally supplies are mistakenly printed early. Most builders and publishers have their very own course of to make sure leaks do not occur, however within the case of Left 4 Useless 2, Valve noticed alternative.
The leaked footage in query seems to be the Zombie Survival Information cinematic trailer, which perhaps not-so-mysteriously appeared on-line in October 2009, one month earlier than the launch of Left 4 Useless 2. It is a three-minute story video that lets survivors Coach, Ellis, Nick, and Rochelle free to tear by hordes of zombies with chainsaws, weapons, and extra. Though it is fairly violent, Faliszek did not say precisely what the ESRB had taken challenge with. No matter it was, it did not appear to matter a lot to Valve.
“Yeah, it initially acquired leaked as a result of we had this with the ESRB, in order that’s why loads of the language needed to get toned down,” he continued.
All of it actually appeared to work out for the perfect – no less than for Valve. Left 4 Useless 2 went on to launch to rave evaluations from critics and followers, together with a 9/10 evaluation from IGN. Though it by no means led to a 3rd recreation (due to course it did not), we discovered quite a bit to like concerning the multiplayer zombie sequel, calling it “one of the crucial distinctive co-operative titles on the market” on the time.
For extra on Valve, you possibly can take a look at our checklist of the highest 10 finest video games the studio has made. You too can study the current leak that has followers digging by greater than a decade of information.
Michael Cripe is a contract author with IGN. He is finest recognized for his work at websites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. You’ll want to give him a observe on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).