Summary
- Valve leaked the Left 4 Dead 2 trailer themselves to sidestep ESRB restrictions.
- ESRB demands forced Valve to tone down in-game lines and cut drug/alcohol references.
- The leak blurs whether some “leaks” are real or staged to dodge rules or drum up hype.
If you were PC gaming around October 2009, you may remember that someone leaked the Left 4 Dead 2 trailer online. At the time, it felt like perhaps Valve was furious that someone had managed to leak data ahead of the game’s release. However, it turns out that Valve held the cards the whole time, as the lead for Left 4 Dead 2 admitted that the company uploaded it themselves to dodge ESRB rulings.
Left 4 Dead 2’s project lead admits Valve leaked the trailer itself
The ESRB wouldn’t allow it any other way
Over on his YouTube channel, the project lead and writer for Left 4 Dead 2, Chet Faliszek, discussed what went on behind the scenes when writing the characters. I highly recommend watching the entire video and not just skipping to the part where he admits that Valve leaked its own trailer. It’s a fascinating insight into how he wrote the characters, why some lines got cut from the final product, and the struggles he faced.
One of those struggles was trying to appease the ESRB, the board behind giving the game an age rating. To achieve the rating Valve wanted for the first Left 4 Dead title, Faliszek had to cut lines from the game that the ESRB didn’t like. This included references to drugs and alcohol, including Faliszek’s favorite line from Francis during the Dead Air campaign. It would have had Francis remark, “This is the most sober I’ve ever been in an airport,” but it was cut due to the alcohol reference.
When making Left 4 Dead 2, Valve butted heads once more with the ESRB. One of the pain points was with the trailer, which the ESRB wanted changed before it was officially released. Valve didn’t want to change it, so they instead took the unofficial route:
“…especially for Left 4 Dead 2, with the ESRB, we…we leaked the ES—we leaked our trailer ahead of time, because they wouldn’t let us release the trailer. I’ll just admit that, I think we can’t get in trouble for that now. It’s like 20 years ago.
Um, so it’s funny seeing leaked stuff now because, yeah, you can’t look—I don’t think you can look for ‘leaked Left 4 Dead 2 trailer’ because it’s just going to be, eh, it’s lost now. But yeah, it originally got leaked because we—we had this with the ESRB, and so that’s why, like a lot of the language got to get toned down…”
It does make me wonder how many leaks in the gaming industry were legitimate leaks and how many were the company deliberately trying to skirt under rules or generate hype. Still, it’s good that the story behind Left 4 Dead 2’s trailer came to light.
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