Steam's Left 4 Dead sale increased purchase infection by 3000%

by Alexander Sliwinski on Feb 20th 2009 12:15AM

Left 4 Dead saw a 3000% increase in sales during its Steam sale last weekend. Valve's Gabe Newell revealed the stunning figure during his DICE keynote, in which he also announced the digital distribution service saw its customer base increase 1600% that same weekend. G4 noted that the Valve overlord believes those figures broke the game's launch sales.

Steam has certainly been experimenting with numerous sales lately. Valve has even hired an experimental psychologist to maximize buzz and marketing around the online retail sales. Wait, now Valve doesn't just want our wallets, they want our braaaaaaains too? Taking the whole zombie thing a little seriously, perhaps?

[Via Shacknews]

Source

Tags: gabe-newell, l4d, left-4-dead, Microsoft, steam, valve, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (48)

I kicked myself in the face for not buying this or TF2 when it was on sale. Stupid face.

yea i did too. it was a bad move on my part. i have it for the 360 and i have the orange box but both would be good to have on my pc too. i need to play CSS again

To be honest, you deserve a good bonking for not picking up TF2.

And the crazy thing?

I was one of them.

I wish they'd do this with L4D again, I missed that sale and have been meaning to get the game >_> Dammit.

IT'S OVER 3000!

Not surprising for Valve... They're the most awesomest awesome ever, after all... Each game, something new, something rad, something innovative.

In al fairness, $24.99 is what Left 4 Dead should've been priced in the first place.

Disagreed... 50 bucks is fine for it. I think it's worth 50 beans because of the technology they put into it. (The AI Director, is hands down one impressive fuckin' tech.)

It is worth 50 bucks, but after receiving the super awesome deal that the orange box was, we might have been a little spoiled...

I've gotten more playtime out of it, and more fun, than most single player games. It's been worth every penny, and I paid full price on launch day.

It's a good game, no doubt. But strictly speaking, the size of the game didn't merit that price tag. They're still piggy backing on the source engine, which is not bad, but it means that less time went into development, and looking at similar games like Team Fortress 2 (sold at $20 at the moment), the price is difference is huge.

Maybe $35 bucks would've been a fairer price tag, but not $50.

I've definitely gotten $50.00 worth of enjoyment out of the game and then some. I love the highly competitive versus mode. I can see how the game would get dull if you only played co-op though.

oh, and I can assure you that Valve put more development time into this game than many many other studios put into their standard retail releases

War Machine, when less time is spent on the engine, more time is put into development. I'm making L4D maps right now, and trying to even match the amount of content in terms of gameplay affecting and visual candy in even just one section from a campaign is becoming quite a handful for me and several others working together.

I keep thinking this game is getting the bad rep of "not enough content" because everyone is running there asses off from zombies and not able to 'take in' the scenery.

length != value

;-)

More than anything I'm comparing similar games. TF2 has basically the same experience, simple and short with lots of replay value, the only discernible difference being, again, the price tag. I just can't justify the $50 over $20 difference of L4D over TF2.

Look at it this way, people complained that TF2 was lacking in content due to it's 5 or so maps at launch. Now look at TF2 and how it's grown. Expect the same thing to happen with L4D. It's worth well more than $50

To each their own. I personally didn't get much enjoyment out of L4D, but at £20 (for the boxed game) I won't say I was ripped off.

They saw the rate of increase of their customer base go up 1600%, not their total number of customers.

I bought it for mah best friend, spreadin' the fun thru teh interwebz!
I wonder what the ratio of gifts were?

I've actually picked up sale games on Steam that I haven't played yet. The XCom bundle was just too good to pass up, though I'll be damned if I have had time to play them yet.

Good on Valve. They've done a lot right so far. Actual game sales is just another thing they're bringing to the table.

Yep, Steam's sales have also suckered me into buying games I have yet to play, the Xcom bundle being one of them.

slickdeals front page effect

awesome....it's too bad Steam disabled my account for no apparent reason >_>

Everyone should buy this game...

By this math if the game industry would cut the price of games they would sell enough extra copies to overcompensate for the lower profit margin and end up making more money.

If only it were that simple.

Until they make it OVER 9000!!!!! that of the launch I willl refuse to be impressed.

but that's impossible

I was part of this three thousand percent.

I'm proudly one of those 3000%. In fact, I just finished Dead Air. Frigging amazing stuff this game is.

This is misleading, as FEAR2 forced everyone on PC to install Steam in the last week. would of been a surge of atleast 10000 new users due to the game. Cant credit it all to Left4Dead

credit for the increase in users was never given to L4D. The article never said the two statistics were related

Why is this post tagged for xbox?? I thought we were talking about PC here?

No idea. Joystiq doesn't have a PC tag, though, for some reason. They could easily make a PC tag that would link to Big Download.

3000%?! Seriously? That's truly... MADNESS! SPAAAARRRTAAA!

yo, if anyone wants to buy my Steam account for $50, email me at gku@sfsu.edu. It has all the Valve games.

If you don't have L4D for PC now after that most epic of sales you deserve nothing in life ever again.

I grabed it when it was on sale and i'm so glad i did. What a Great Game!

Get a PC tag, Joystiq

I'm still playing this game on 360, and it's a riot in Vs mode. Last night I was lasso'ed by a Smoker from across a chasm, and the resulting hilarity had my sides split for the rest of the evening. I was skeptical at first about paying full price for a game with less maps/etc, but this one has gotten more play time than Gears of War 2, and that's saying something.

The only time I went to buy this game for 360, it was on offer and sold out >_>

whats this got to do with xbox? and second, l4d was a complete waste of money.. and i was one of them fools who pre-ordered it on steam.for my pc. It was fun for about 3 hours, then it just kept repeating itself.

Yeah, what's with the xbox tag? Xbox got no Steam.

I'm also part of those 3000%. I never thought that Left 4 Dead was worth 50$ personally. But at half of that, I figure it was a deal so I bought it.

Only played one campaign with a friend of mine and it was fun. I'll wait further before giving more comments about being worth the money or not but I'm possitive that I'm more happy about bpaying 25$ instead of 50$ for this. But this is a given ;-)

Perhaps Ninja Theory should re-release Heavenly Sword with Zombies they seem to make everything perfect, no matter how many times a horde of zombies completely ignores you who has injured them to gnaw upon your party members.

For only having 4 campaigns and at this time only two of the campaigns can be played in Versus mode I can't justify the $50 price tag. I pre-purchased the game, saved me 5 bucks. I'm not saying the game isn't fun, its a total blast but seems "light" in content. If somebody would just play offline, the fun wears off fast, but playing with friends and everybody has a mic, that's FUN!

I think it does justify a $50 price tag, easily. $60 however, remains to be seen, as the Xbox DLC for this game (as opposed to TF2) seems to be traveling on as parallel a track as the PC stuff as has ever been seen by Valve.

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Steam's Left 4 Dead sale increased purchase infection by 3000%

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