All L4D user-created content will work with L4D2

Chet Faliszek criticises "disingenuous" boycotters in soon-to-be published Kikizo interview.

By Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Valve Corporation veteran and Left 4 Dead 2 project lead Chet Faliszek has told Kikizo that all user-created content for the original Left 4 Dead will be compatible "out of the box" with the sequel.

"For modders, everything they make in Left 4 Dead will work in Left 4 Dead 2," Chet revealed during a recent London preview event. "It'll work better if they bring it into Left 4 Dead 2 and recompile it for Left 4 Dead 2, using some of the additions we've made, but it'll work out of the box as well. We just want to make sure that anyone who's making a mod now knows that their time's going to be well spent."

That should go some way towards appeasing members of the Left 4 Dead 2 boycott, who feel the arrival of a sequel barely a year after the original's release will produce a split player community.

Chet also remarked that Valve had further, yet-to-be finalised plans to bring users of either title together. "We need to have some way that those fans who buy the new game and own the old game, or want to pick up the old the game... We've talked about some kind of way for all of that to work. We don't have anything concrete yet that we can say. But definitely we've thought about community and we've thought about those worlds."

Feedback from the Left 4 Dead modding community has been overwhelmingly positive, Chet went on, despite contrary suggestions from "disingenuous" boycotters.

"We've talked with a lot of those guys. That's one of those things - seeing people saying that modders are having a reaction against it, and having just traded 10 emails with these guys and I know their reaction to it, we've talked about it, and they're OK with it. They understand. So that's kind of disingenuous."

Check back next week for the full interview. Left 4 Dead 2 is slated for release on 17th November.