Curious. Following The Sacrifice and The Passing, Eurogamer‘s got word that Valve will be releasing a third piece of downloadable content for Left 4 Dead 2 with a new Cold Stream campaign. Cold Stream is actually a work in progress fan campaign by Matthew Lourdelet, creator of the acclaimed 2 Evil Eyes campaign. According a post on Valve’s official Left 4 Dead 2 blog, Valve have seen Lourdelet’s work so far and decided to release it in a non-story driven pack containing the other three Left 4 Dead 1 campaigns not currently in L4D2.



Here’s the relevant quote from Valve’s post. The important scraps of information worth snuffling up are that the pack will be released after Portal 2, it doesn’t have a name yet and there will be no new audio or story. Mm! Mm.

Matthew Lourdelet (2 Evil Eyes) has been working on a new community campaign – Cold Stream. We loved 2 Evil Eyes and Cold Stream looks even more promising with innovative game play arenas and effects. Matthew has really shown that there are still plenty of new ideas in L4D2 modding.

He recently shared it with us and we love it so far but it isn’t done. We were tempted to have him quietly finish it with our help and release it as part of an upcoming DLC.

Tempted… but we decided against that. Instead, we think we have a better idea. We want you the community to be part of the process of taking his unfinished campaign and releasing it as DLC on the Xbox 360, PC and Mac.

Since Matthew already has a start on the campaign, we need to back up a little in the process before we go forward.

The very first step in creating a new DLC is deciding on the larger goals and constraints for the DLC. The Sacrifice and the Passing were story heavy, so we want to see what the other end of the spectrum looks like. For this DLC we start with wanting to experiment by releasing a map pack that wasn’t about story. It would just be new campaigns for Left 4 Dead 2.

That makes the first constraint no new audio or story.

The easiest starting point for new campaigns is the three remaining Left 4 Dead 1 campaigns, so the DLC will include those. We also want something brand new and Cold Stream is the perfect fit.

That’s the start of the DLC. We have the basic information but we don’t even have a name or release date yet.

We will hold off on the name for now.

That leaves the release date. The answer to when the DLC will be released is simple for now, sometime after Portal 2. Why don’t we set some date in stone right now? Because the real answer to when we are going to release something is always – when it’s ready.