Spilling the beans tonight, Valve Software's Doug Lombardi has revealed to ShackNews that their upcoming co-op based zombie shooter, Left 4 Dead, has been slightly delayed and will now ship some time in November. The game was previously scheduled for release this Summer, but in typical Valve fashion, they've pushed the launch date back a few months to add some serious polish. Here's the scoop:
Shack: What's the current state of development on Left 4 Dead?
Doug Lombardi: So the game is pretty much playable all the way through right now. And as we've done with most of our games, we get to a point where, it's playable all the way through, there are some [minor] issues that we need to work on, and we try to add more time to the schedule to have as many people as possible play the game, to make sure that it's approachable to players of all skills. We want to make sure that all the game that we've built gets played, not just be like, "Okay, it's complete, let's ship it."
For example, Half-Life 2 was pretty much done in April of 2004, and we spent the rest of that year just looking at pacing, and looking at approachability, and making sure the easy setting was easy enough, etc. So we're in a pretty similar state right now, with it being, what, early May, and we're looking at the same time frame--November--for shipping.
So we're going to be spending a lot of time just bringing it to events like this, taking it to Quakecon and Leipzig, and just getting as many people's hands on it as possible to make sure that it's playing right and that it's fun, and that the group dynamics are showing up and are visible to people.
Doug also mentions that a demo is very likely and a "free weekend" is also being kicked around. Click here for the full interview!
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