User blog comment:Zikkun/The Spitter, created by the L4D2 boycotting group./@comment-1289253-20090728000223

I'm not going to start a flame war or anything, but I would like to post my opinion of the L4D2 boycotters. They're boycotting L4D2 because allegedly Valve is creating a whole separate game instead of releasing DLC for the first L4D. First off, that's ALL you can complain about if you're a boycotter, really. So far Valve's failed to disappoint with the new content. Yes, they've changed some of the things from the first thing, but they've added in more than enough to make up for it. Melee meter? Melee weapons. That kind of thing. Valve has also put in more than enough content to satisfy what should be the general L4D community, making the game worth the $20-60 (computer or 360) price tag (or even less, who knows, Valve might even give discounts to original L4D owners since you boycotters have been griping so much). Also, these "plagiarized" ideas? For the Valve to be able to present a near fully finished enemy at Comic Con and for it to have incorporated it into the game as they have after someone posted the idea on their forums would require nothing short of a large amount of Valve's staff working quickly enough to put it into the game for Comic Con. The person posted the idea on May 30th. Gamespy and IGN previewed the new content on July 20th and July 21st, respectively. Valve would have most likely had to have a finalized version (complete with the presentable Spitter) about one or two weeks before this. This would require Valve to have fully programmed and incorporated the Spitter in about five or six weeks, which would have been a pretty impressive feat just to plagiarize an idea and just to have boycotters climbing up their asses about it. The people upset at Valve about it are just pissy over the fact that it's not in the first L4D (which, again, Valve has promised new content for and actually has yet to let their fans down). I know that the Charger idea has been around for a long while now, and Valve could have easily copied it, but the ideas Valve are throwing down are generally the same that the community is thinking about as well. What could be a good enemy for the Survivors to fight? What would be balanced? Do the Infected need a ranged enemy? Do they need a solid battering ram other than the Tank? The idea that the "community" (actually, one guy and another guy who sketched up the idea) came up with of the Charger had absolutely nothing in common (look wise, anyway) with Valve's Charger, and I'm sure if the creator of both the Charger and Spitter had cared SO MUCH about their ideas, they would have at least attempted to program it themselves, or find someone who was interested in doing it themselves. Also, I'm sure that, being experienced game developers with numerous successful games under their belt, Valve came up with most of these ideas long before the community did. EVEN IF Valve felt the need to "steal" "the community's" ideas, the people who came up with the ideas would actually be thanking Valve if they had included it in a game that everyone already owned (Which brings up another point; if Valve had released the new weapons, campaigns, enemies, etc. as downloadable content for L4D, what if players didn't like them? To actually have been able to release the content, Valve would have had to entirely revamp the Director and the way the game works in order to put the content in the game. If they had done that and people downloaded it and didn't like it, getting rid of it might have raised up issues as well, as far as with the Director.); it's only because Valve slapped a price tag on it that people are complaining about, not that the amounts of new content are, well, palpable. This also brings up the fact that people are only complaining about it "not being a sequel" just because it came out in less than a year. Ignoring the fact that it was necessary to make it a sequel to get the content to work, if Valve had released this in three years people wouldn't be complaining. So, what, people enjoy waiting years for things now? Most companies that develop sequels, unless they entirely revamp the stuff for new systems, use leftover programming and the like to help them develop the sequel, and just because Valve is doing this earlier than most people are complaining for some reason. Personally, I find the whole issue ridiculous, and the only reason people are complaining is because of the cost of a new game. Again, Valve isn't forgetting about the first L4D, so even if cheapasses want to not buy L4D2 Valve will still be supporting them with new content, and at this point Valve really shouldn't be helping the ungrateful fans of theirs at all, but they still are and will be. Anyways, that's my enormous soapbox speech, it just irritates me on how many people automatically assume Valve has gone down the toilet based on the fact that they're actually charging money for a sequel, despite how they've never let their fans down before. So that's my thoughts on things, if anyone cares.