Left 4 Dead Zero Asset Release

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Information about Left 0 Dead Zero's asset release, spanning about ~40 GB total, with ~10 GB being original assets. It is the largest current public release of Left 4 Dead 1/2-related content and sources.

Subpages

Concept Art
The concepts released, ranging from press assets to vikings.


Announcements

The summary here will cover information in relation to the archive release. More information can be found through the links provided.

"OP Delivers."

Link:[1]

On October 2, 2017, Theuaredead` posted an announcement on the L4D0 steam group, containing a link to the project's assets. It discusses several topics, including the cancellation, the archive, the 2014 leak of a few of their assets, and the current state of Valve.

Cancellation

The reasoning for doing so is a combination of Hunt Down the Freeman's highly-publicized failure making Valve discontinue supporting Valve-related mod projects[2], an exhaustion with sucking up to Valve to get the assets[3], the community's dislike of the project, and a desire to work on less creatively constrained projects.[4].

Archive

The archive primarily consists of the project's work, and what L4D0 was sent by either Turtle Rock or Valve. It is specifically noted that nothing is from the later on NDA-ed license with Valve, as nothing was sent under it.

Besides this, the creation of the current archive was a messy process, involving disorganized backups that had to be put together as a result of 4-5 different deletions of the development drive[5].

"An Addendum."

Link:[6]

Theuaredead` clarifies a variety of details relating to the previous post:

  • Valve failed to make it clear whether they supported the project or not because they kept giving the project assets, which then kept the project going until the official shutdown.
  • HDTF is not the only reason for the project being shut down. If it was, why wouldn't the announcement to shut down the project be posted in April, about the time when HDTF was most relevant?
  • The earlier asset leaks previously mentioned were not responsible for the project's closure, as the team was able to fix the issues and there was no NDA to violate at this point.
  • There are no further details provided about the partnership between Zero and Valve because it is under NDA.

Another Addendum.

Link:[7]

Theuaredead` briefly clarifies that the releasing of the project's assets does not authorize someone to continue the project and that he doesn't authorize or support third-party mirrors[8] of the asset release. He adds that there is no guarantee of the assets working, with a lot of it having major issues.

References

  1. https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Left4DeadZero#announcements/detail/2702614367200045279
  2. "Valve cut all communications with us after the release of HDTF, and we have internal sources that very much points to that being the reason why many licensed Source developers were no longer able to contact Valve, at least, as far as I was told."
  3. "After years of just sucking up to Valve and proving we weren't like the community to them and that we had no intentions of leaking assets..."
  4. "So much shit from the community, the constant ass kissing to Valve just to make sure we stay afloat, and more. Along with that, honestly, we'd just value our time and would rather give it to an original IP and not a dead IP that a backwards company owns."
  5. "I had to go through every dev backup I had to get it to this point, which is harder than you may think it is. The backups were in a very sorry state, the entire L4D Zero developer drive has been deleted a total of 4-5 times just over one person getting upset at me or some random situation. But before he could delete the entire drive from existence, I would go in and back it up, but I never bothered to make separate folders for them during the first few times, I just dumped them all into the same folder. This led to various revisions of assets to disappear, multiple folders just full of the same assets, and more."
  6. https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Left4DeadZero#announcements/detail/1676919997002890474
  7. https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Left4DeadZero#announcements/detail/1680298966333827787
  8. Also referring to those "reuploading the project as their own".