Some would say that the zombie genre is on its way out. With a never-ending supply of post-apocalyptic worlds and mindless flesh-eaters gracing our screens, sooner or later it is bound to happen. But after recent news of a Valve information leak , it appears that the company feels it has, at least, one more undead romp left in them.
These pictures of an internal change log at Valve, which originated from a photo taken by a touring group of Dota 2 reddit peeps , seem to confirm the existence of Left 4 Dead 3 , and that it’s being developed on Source 2, presumably the successor to the powerful Source engine. This is a lot of information to come out of one seemingly inconsequential picture, but you know what they say: big things come in small packages. And now that the cat is well outside of its bag, we can only wonder what the future holds for Valve and its beloved intellectual properties.
Perhaps one of the biggest questions to be asked is this–will Left 4 Dead 3 be a multi-platform release? Traditionally, the Left 4 Dead series has only been released on the Xbox 360 and PC/Mac platforms. So could the newest zombie-fest in Valve’s arsenal make its way onto a Sony platform this time around? The PS4 perhaps? The Sony faithful have always been denied this excellent exercise in undead slaughter, and with more recent cross-platform releases like The Orange Box and Portal 2 , it’s definitely possible that the PS4 and Valve could have a zombie bro-hug sometime in the near future. We can only hope.
And even though this leak only references one of Valve’s many IPs, the existence of the Source 2 engine could re-open the door for more of Valve’s critically acclaimed franchises. Portal 3 and a handful of ridiculously popular Half-Life mods could see new light, such as Counter-Strike (what I wouldn’t give for an updated and modernized CS game), Day of Defeat , and Team Fortress . We could even see the prophetically heralded Half-Life 3 , a game fans of the series have been clamoring for since the release of Half-Life 2: Episode 2 in late 2007 (a game Valve has never officially confirmed).
Or we could hope against hope. What if Valve came out with something new? The developer/publisher is long overdue for a new IP. In fact, their newest IP is the Left 4 Dead series, which was established in 2008. Valve has always been a company built on innovation, so to think that they wouldn’t be moving forward just feels wrong: especially with the imminent release of new, more powerful hardware drawing closer every day. So with a 5-year gap in new ideas, I think we may be hearing something interesting from Valve in the very near future. Keep your fingers crossed.
In reality, while this tidbit of leaked information is a huge piece of news, we really don’t know much of anything. No further info has been confirmed (or denied) by Valve, so we will just have to be content with the knowledge that we can expect to see more from Valve in the hopefully near future.
We can’t wait.