Which “standard” is this? Wouldn’t they have had to provide good post-launch support in more than one game (TF2) for it to be a *standard*?

Guess you never played Half-Life or any of it’s pantheon of mods then? You may have heard of mods such as ‘Team Fortress Classic’, ‘Science and Industry’, ‘Firearms’, ‘Natural Selection’, ‘Frontline Force’, ‘Day of Defeat’, ‘Action Half-Life’ and a little known mod called ‘Counter-Strike’ which all benefitted hugely from VALVe’s constant support of the Half-Life engine & mod tools for at least 6 years after it’s initial release in 1998.

I’m not on either side of this stupid argument btw, just pointing out the facts.

I think people who start using words like “boycott”, “regret” and “hate” in this context need to go outside, as suggested above. Look into the eyes of the duck.

Now I know how Ben Kenobi felt when Vader turned to the Dark Side…

No, I didn’t go that deep. I wanted to know the definition, not it’s origins and development.

TF2, natch.

I don’t think jalf is claiming you should or shouldn’t be satisfied with the new content for the original L4D. He’s just saying he isn’t satisfied, and he’s making note of that fact by not purchasing L4D2.

Also, Valve did deliver updates, they just forgot 1 or two pieces of content. Just because you weren’t satisfied with the updates delivered doesn’t mean others weren’t.

There’s no shortage of fun games.

I think it says alot about Valve as a company that I find what they’re doing with L4D2 annoying. It shows just how highly I’ve come to think of them. It may be somewhat unfair, but I am going to hold them at the standard they’ve set in the past.

Which “standard” is this? Wouldn’t they have had to provide good post-launch support in more than one game (TF2) for it to be a *standard*?

Valve has turned out some great games, and TF2’s post-launch support has been amazing (even if some of their updates have done more harm than good, at least they show commitment to the game). But let’s not go overboard here. TF2 is the exception to the norm. It is not Valve’s *standard*. They have never done anything like that before, and so far, they have not done it since either.

Why are you wailing and gnashing your teeth because Valve had the temerity to like what they made enough to pursue an even better version?

A comparison: I don’t see Internet anger directed at EA’s sports franchises which come out with a new-but-barely-different iteration every year. How is L4D2 different?

Ah, since you brought it up, let’s talk about one thing that annoys me about whingers like you. You’ve found something to attack others over, and that is so important to you that you’d never even dream of actually looking into what people are complaining about, because then it might just turn out they have a legitimate complaint, and that would completely ruin your fun, wouldn’t it? Much more fun to play it safe and stay ignorant, and just attack and bash people instead. So far, it has been stated very clearly and calmly in *every* single post on RPS mentioning either L4D or L4D2. But you’d rather be “annoyed” about “boycott whingers” than actually read their *reasons*.

What makes L4D2 different from EA Sports franchises is simple:

EA never had three high-profile employees, in three separate interviews, state that they intended to:

1: Deliver free updates after launch, and
2: That said updates would be delivered at an more frequently than TF2’s updates, and
3: that these updates would contain new types of infected, and
4: that these updates would contain new campaigns for coop and versus, and
5: that these updates would contain new weapons.

The reason why people are upset is that EA has the basic integrity to not promise these things unless they intend to honour that promise.

Valve did not. Gabe Newell, Chet Faliszek and Doug Lombardi all, separately and independently stated that they would do these things after launch.

For your EA comparison to hold, we’d pretty much need John Riccitiello or Peter Moore to go out and make the same promises about one of their upcoming sports games.

EA has not done this. And that is how L4D is different from EA’s sports franchises.

EA doesn’t promise much, so when they don’t deliver much, we’re not surprised. Valve made a very clear business decision of promising some very specific things, which they then threw out the window as soon as they’d taken our money.

Un-snarky question: those who’ve disowned it; what are you playing instead?

What, you mean those fixes that they released already? Ok. I was pretty pissed off when I thought they were going to charge for the initial DLC, but they didn’t and after it was released I was at least content with the fact the game was “complete” in a sense. It was not anywhere near as replayable as they made out though, I can only hope L4D 2 will live up to that hype.