Valve Confirms Left 4 Dead 3 Was (Sort Of) in Development

It’s possibly hard to believe, but it’s been over 10 years now since Valve last released a Left 4 Dead game. With such a highly-popular franchise, however, that hasn’t stopped people speculating that a new one might be on the way.

Well, in pouring some cold water over the whole situation, Valve has confirmed categorically that Left 4 Dead 3 is definitely not in development. Albeit, they have said that it was (for a time) sort of being worked on.

Valve Confirmed Left 4 Dead 3 Was Kind Of In Development

In a report via DSOGaming, Valve has confirmed that, for a period around 3-4 years ago, L4D3 was in development. Rather than being planned for an actual release, however, it was more of a ‘concept’ production while they worked on their Source 2 engine.

“We used parts of a Left 4 Dead level as the first bit of level geometry to start building in Source 2, so a bit of that got out. It was essentially a rendering test, and people thought that meant we were working on Left 4 Dead.

We built lots of different things as part of building technology in Source 2… There were groups here who would generate a product in mind that would attempt to be a target for Source 2, and so a couple of those were Left 4 Dead-related things, but none of them reached the point where we were like, ‘now this is a product team that we’re going to build a big product around.’. They were more tools for moving Source 2 forward.”

Will it Ever Happen?

The short version is, don’t count on it. Valve has always blown a little hot and cold on their game development. Particularly in recent years where there has certainly been a lot more speculation than confirmation. While L4D3 could almost certainly happen at some point, we kind of wonder whether (similar to Half-Life 3) the weight of the expectation is simply too great now. In other words, people’s expectations are so high that Valve daren’t attempt to meet them.

Any way you look at it though, Left 4 Dead 3 is definitely, 100%, not in development. Sorry guys and gals!

What do you think? Would you like to see L4D3? More so, do you think it will ever happen? – Let us know in the comments!