Over the last few years, Valve have been quietly honing the fine art of viral marketing in an online age, and comics have been a big part of that. A cartel of in-house writers and the excellent pencils of Michael Avon Oeming (and others) have created some rather splendid words’n'pictures. Of course, they were merely digital. HOW DARE YOU INSULT OUR EYEBALLS WITH YOUR CRUMMY JPEGS? Why, that’s for philistines> and people too damned lazy to turn paper pages. This horrendous oversight and offence to everything that some angry guy somewhere probably holds dear is about to be corrected, thanks to a hardback compilation of Valve’s various Portal, Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2 comics due from august comic publisher Dark Horse later this year.
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You know what always goes well? When Valve offers to release something early if only customers do something for them. That’s something with a solid history. Leaping onto this unwaveringly endorsed theme once more, Valve have announced plans on the Left 4 Dead blog to release Dead Air from community-co-created Cold Stream DLC pack early if enough people bug test the new campaign for them.

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More sites should interview mod-makers, I feel. If one of this week’s picks is anything to go by, they can have some interesting things to say. Modding might not usually be quite as huge a process as making a full-on indie game, but as a modder you face your own unique problems, ones we don’t always get to hear about. Maybe we should take note of that at RPS. Either way, read on for this week’s roundup.
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You may have seen some sites reporting yesterday that Michael Louisseize, operator of World Of Minecraft, is creating a Left 4 Dead mod that merges Valve’s four-player shooter with Notch’s world-taking-over craft-em-up. We have a few more details about it below.

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Valve send word that The Sacrifice, the DLC for both Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2, is now available on Steam.

“The new DLC is available free of charge to all Steam gamers who own a copy of L4D and/or L4D2. And, for a limited time, L4D and L4D2 (as well as their respective Steam bundles) are available for 66% off the regular price.”

That said, my Steam doesn’t seem to be updating. Hmm. Oh, now it is.

Welcome to October, via more zombie drama for Friday morning. The Sacrifice, the latest DLC for both Left 4 Dead and its sequel, is arriving on PC on 5th October. Rather looking forward to this one, I have to say. (more…)

Quick one: the third and penultimate part of the rather impressive Left 4 Dead gap-filling online comic The Sacrifice has arrived. It’s rather gory, gore fans. Also peanut-buttery, peanut butter fans. Francis takes the spotlight this time around, though I maintain that his hair’s drawn a bit too long.

Valve also explain that these words and pictures are “the official version of events”, compared to the choose-your-own-fatal-adventure morbid giggling of the upcoming Sacrifice DLC. So there you go, crazy Wikipedia people.

But which safehouseman? Or safehousewoman? That’s your problem, bucko. Your problem to solve as you play the latest DLC for Left 4 Dead on October 5. Or! As you play the latest DLC for Left 4 Dead 2 on October 5. Yes, yes, they’re doing that. >All is fair in love and released-slightly-too-soon-zombie-sequels. (more…)

That rather confusing title being a reference to the second part of The Sacrifice, the continuity-plugging comic which describes the events that lead up to recent L4D2 DLC The Passing. We posted about the first part here, and now we’re posting about this one here. It’s a 40-page tale of the original Left 4 Deaders, soldiers, and vampires. Sorta. Once again, Michael Avon Oeming takes to the pencils for this big old chunk of survivor chatter. This one includes backstory, and tragedy.

Read it! Read it with your reading organs! Then be mildly frustrated that part three doesn’t land until the 28th.