I suppose that word of the day is “Money”, so let’s talk about another company’s supposed greed.

It’s been a rough week for what I feel is one of the best developers in video games, Valve. Following the debut of the bloody-great trailer for their newly announced Left 4 Dead 2, the gamer community has been less than thrilled with the company. Valve, a developer long-thought of as a consumer-minded entity amongst money-hungry crap-peddlers is being accused of giving gamers the shaft.

Their crime? Ripping gamers off by over charging for content.

Left 4 Dead was released on November 18, 2008 with a $60 price tag (the norm for games nowadays) and some truly positive reviews. The game is one of the coolest, fastest, and all-around fun multiplayer experiences there is. Despite all of these positives, a slew of gamers openly expressed that the game is not worth the dough.

Now I don’t completely agree with this statement, but they do indeed have a point. The game has four shipped maps and two modes of play. Fight the zombies or fight the humans. Is this worth $60 to you? Not to me. Lucky for us, I believe that Valve understands this, and that’s why the price dropped to $40 at most places (a price that I think is perfect) and the “Survival” expansion wound up being completely free, and how often do you see that in this day and age of DLC? (Valve isn’t like Capcom, who charged $5 for Resident Evil 5 Versus mode and Street Fighter 4 costumes already on the disc. I still laugh when ever I read this Consumerist Article). I think everyone felt pretty good about that.

Then came Microsoft’s pre-E3 conference where we saw this trailer…
(more…)