Left 4 Dead 2 offers early DLC unlock

Valve is offering early access to the Dead Air piece of the upcoming Cold Stream DLC, if 20,000 willing guinea pigs unlock an achievement by the end of day on Sunday.

15

Once again, Valve is offering early access to a game if its fans jump through a hoop or two. This time it's Left 4 Dead 2, and the offer is a piece of the Cold Stream downloadable content. A blog post outlines the details.

The developer is currently in the testing phase, and is offering an incentive for the community to become bug-finders. If 20,000 people earn the "Stream Crosser" achievement by the end of the day on Sunday, July 10, Valve will release Dead Air (from Cold Stream) on July 22. Stream Crosser is awarded for surviving a campaign of Cold Stream, so it shouldn't be too unobtainable. If you don't own the game yet, it's just $5 until 10 am PST today.

Valve previously offered early access to Portal 2 in exchange for playing indie games. This netted users the anticipated game about 9 hours early. Unlocking DLC for an existing game probably isn't quite as exciting, but early is early.

Editor-In-Chief
From The Chatty
  • reply
    July 7, 2011 7:45 AM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, Left 4 Dead 2 offers early DLC unlock.

    Valve is offering early access to the Dead Air piece of the upcoming Cold Stream DLC, if 20,000 willing guinea pigs unlock an achievement by the end of day on Sunday.

    • reply
      July 7, 2011 8:17 AM

      I avoid playing Cold Stream because it almost always turns out to be a nearly unplayable 15-20 fps exercise in frustration for me.

    • reply
      July 7, 2011 8:22 AM

      This would be ok if it weren't for the fact that Valve didn't force a lame beta campaign on everyone as a L4D2 update. It isn't even well designed or all that great either. There are better campaigns out there that deserve the spotlight.

      • reply
        July 7, 2011 8:24 AM

        forcing it on us

        • reply
          July 7, 2011 8:31 AM

          it's rape in digital bandwidth form

          • reply
            July 7, 2011 8:47 AM

            they're SHOVING IT DOWN OUR FUCKING THROATS

            • reply
              July 7, 2011 9:15 AM

              I'm GAGGING on the PIPE; Ceci n'est pas une pipe!

      • reply
        July 7, 2011 8:26 AM

        It is curious why Valve is giving this campaign so much love because as you said, it isn't very well designed or fun imo.

      • reply
        July 7, 2011 8:29 AM

        I agree mmmmmoo - i got the achievement, but didn't have fun doing so

        • reply
          July 7, 2011 8:39 AM

          Same, rushed through it on easy with bots. Didn't enjoy it. It's still buggy, sometimes the survivors get trapped in the safe room at the start of the last level, not to mention the awful design in some areas where it is ludicrously easy in versus to charge people to their death.

      • reply
        July 7, 2011 9:05 AM

        [deleted]

      • reply
        July 7, 2011 9:09 AM

        [deleted]

      • reply
        July 7, 2011 9:11 AM

        Forcing this FREE CONTENT onto us. The fucking NERVE VALVE!

        • reply
          July 7, 2011 1:31 PM

          It's a beta. I don't want to download anything potentially broken and or crappy.

          We Canadians don't have unlimited bandwidth anymore, we're all stuck with limited GBs to use per month. :(

        • reply
          July 7, 2011 3:51 PM

          I agree. It's unconscionable that Valve would offer an incentive for gamers to help beta test a map.

    • reply
      July 7, 2011 8:55 AM

      Great, I'm the guy who just got L4D2 for a friend on Monday and now there's a better deal...

      • reply
        July 7, 2011 2:27 PM

        The first rule of steam sales is to never buy until the last day unless its a daily deal.... That's your own fault.

    • reply
      July 7, 2011 9:01 AM

      Run through it on EASY just to get it over with.

      • reply
        July 7, 2011 9:09 AM

        how long did that take?

        • reply
          July 7, 2011 9:10 AM

          [deleted]

          • reply
            July 7, 2011 9:22 AM

            that's not too bad. I'll see if i can knock it out this weekend.

          • reply
            July 7, 2011 3:27 PM

            Errmm, it can be done in about 15 mins on solo and easy.

        • reply
          July 7, 2011 2:28 PM

          3 of us ran through on Normal in 40 minutes, first time playing it, stopping to have a look at the scenery and what not.

      • reply
        July 7, 2011 2:46 PM

        Did this yesterday and had a good time with it. Didn't run into any showstopper bugs, but found special infected getting stuck on a lot of stuff. Also a room in the memorial bridge section that had 3 purple checkerboards on the wall and the radio for help in the last bit doesn't reply back.

        • reply
          July 8, 2011 7:37 AM

          Yup saw both of those issues too.

          My team of 4 friends couldn't actually finish it, it was our first time ever playing a l4d game. Was alot of fun, and we had it on easy but still couldn't do it. I feel like a huge bucket of fail today.

    • reply
      July 7, 2011 2:49 PM

      I played Cold Stream with a consistent, rnadom group of pubbies the other night. I was the only one in the group to unlock the achievement after 6 tries, as everyone else died. I felt like such a huge douche :/

Hello, Meet Lola