Celebrating Left 4 Dead 2 s official release on Linux and America s Day of Independence, we re putting L4D2 on sale for a stunning 75% off!

We know people have a busy weekend ahead of them with BBQs, sack races, blowing fingers off, and other fun summer time activities, so we made it a little more enticing to give it a try this weekend. We are making L4D2 free until 10am PST Monday morning.

The Extended Mutation System, Linux support, and other features and fixes are moving to Left 4 Dead 2 proper. Thanks to everyone who helped test all the changes in the Beta Build. You can find a complete list of the change notes here.

Linux
The Linux conversion is ready for primetime so we are opening it up to more people and releasing it officially on Steam. This will let us get feedback on more builds and distros.

SteamPipe
Some of you may have noticed a quick update to your game last week. That was our conversion over to SteamPipe. For L4D2 it was quick and painless as our system was already using VPKs. What does this change mean? For server operators there is an easier update path and smaller downloads. For clients, we have improved the downloading experience and you can now install L4D2 on any drive. You can get more details on the support page.

This week we updated both the L4D2 Beta and L4D2. As we get closer to the Linux release, we will continue to merge in some outstanding bug fixes and issues we have been working on.

Thanks to everyone playing the Beta and helping us test. The update today consists of changes that were tested in the Beta. Check here for the complete change list for the Beta and the patch notes for today s L4D2 update are available here.

We have seen some discussions about some of the sample Mutations with shipped with the Beta. Some of these like Holdout are fully formed game modes. Others are tests or example code for other people to play around with.

A good example is with the L4D1 Mutation. It is a sample Mutation to show how easy it is to change the game. Don t like some of the choices? Change them. The code below is the script file for that mode 52 lines of script. You can see how simple, yet powerful the new scripting mode is. For more information visit the L4D2 EMS Wiki.

We have had plenty of people asking about the L4D2 Beta showing up in their steam catalog. So in case you missed it or were confused, here is some more info.

Currently, changes to L4D2 will first appear in the Beta before they appear in the main game. The Beta will change often. This mean this build is very active so you might want to avoid it if you have bandwidth caps. Today we released another update for it. You can read the release notes for the update here.

Thanks to the efficiencies we were able to achieve with Linux, we skipped Valve time and are delivering the L4D2 Beta Linux build today as planned. The Beta build not only allows Linux owners to play the game natively, it is also the testing ground for our new Extended Mutation System.

If you currently own Left 4 Dead 2, You should see Left 4 Dead 2 Beta in your library. If it doesn t show up, restart Steam. This is a complete build of Left 4 Dead 2, so the build is as large as the current game.

The L4D2 Beta is mutating. Not content to just be the testing ground for the new Extended Mutation System, we will be adding Linux to the Beta. And not content with the number of testers in the Beta, we will also be opening up the Beta to all L4D2 owners.

To celebrate the release of Left 4 Dead 2 content in RE6 today, we are releasing two more RE6 special reskins for L4D2. Ogroman is a skin for the Charger and Lepotitsa (pictured) is a replacement for the Boomer. These two join Napad, the Tank replacement in our Official Resident Evil 6 Collection.

We have released the first of the Resident Evil 6 replacement creatures into the L4D2 workshop. You can have Napad replace the current Tank skin by simply going to its Workshop page and clicking subscribe. Why subscribe instead of download? Because if we make an update to the skin, everyone instantly gets the new updated version. By subscribing, you will always have the latest version.

This trailer shows the RE6 mode The Mercenaries: No Mercy, which pits Coach, Ellis, Nick and Rochelle against Resident Evil enemies, plus brings in the Witch and Mini-Tank from L4D2. This mode and the L4D2 characters and monsters are included for free in the PC version of Resident Evil 6.