Left 4 Dead 2 goes free-to-play on Xbox Live next weekend

by Ben Gilbert on Jan 10th 2010 11:30AM

If you've been sitting around on your hands waiting for the next free opportunity to play Left 4 Dead 2 on Xbox Live with your friends, well, we think you're a bit strange and should likely find a better habit. That being said, you'll be happy to hear that the game will be free-to-play for all Xbox Live members (even you lower class Silver folks) next weekend, starting promptly at 12:00PM ET on Friday, January 15, and finishing up on Monday the 18th (also at noon, as confirmed to CVG by Microsoft). We can't imagine that those of you still holding out will be convinced of an Xbox Live Gold account's worth after just one weekend, but it certainly can't hurt, now can it?

Update: The free weekend has been confirmed for Europe only. A Microsoft representative tells Joystiq the company has "nothing to announce at this time" about a North American promotion. When asked if they had a timetable to announce something, the representative politely said that we'll hear something soon one way or another.

Left 4 Dead 2

Source

Tags: co-op, free-to-play, left-4-dead, left-4-dead-2, Microsoft, multiplayer, online, valve, valve-software, xbl, Xbox-360, xbox-live

Reader Comments (72)

But I already play it for free on Steam.

HA HA, so funny.

Then XBox Live and the XBox 360 isn't for you.

I'm sick and tired of people going "ZOMG YUO PAY 4 XBOX MULTIPLAYER? BUT IZ FREE ON PC!!!1"

Here's the thing: I LIKE XBOX LIVE. It's a well-designed service with some great reasons to pay for it. It's not very expensive (~$5/mo CAD from a store-bought card) and it has some amazing features, content and people to make it worth coming back to.

If you are playing it for free on PC, then XBox live wasn't designed for you, so keep playing it on PC then... nobody is going to stop you, or try and "convert you" to XBox.

i think the point he's trying to make is- it should be free. Yeah, you guys are willing to pay for it, but they're gouging you. Ask PSN users how much they pay? Zip. PC users? Zilch. a gold subscription to live isn't getting you anything that PSN or PC users aren't already getting for free.. and if people would stop paying for it, it would send a message that microsoft would have to pay attention to. problem is, that's not going to happen.

Actually it's getting us a lot that the PC/PS3 users aren't getting for free. The party and cross-game voice messages make getting large games with friends together a gajillion times easier, especially if you didn't plan it out ahead of time and you just see each other online in a bunch of different games.

To some people, that may seem minor, but to many people that is a HUGE deal and worth WAY WAY WAY more than a couple bucks a month.

Like me, for instance. I find playing online with friends to be about a thousand times more fun that playing online with random people, and on XBL that's how I'm able to play 99% of the time because it's so easy to get together. On the PS3/PC, it's extremely rare that I get 8 buddies together at the same time to play a game, and it's a lot less fun for me because of it.

Those 10 vs 10 servers on steam with a points system to buy health, tanks, witches, guns, or hordes and you can crawl when you are down as a survivor are the best thing in L4D2... and I don't have to pay $35 dollars a year to only be able to play 4 vs 4.

is this games as laggy as the demo is? I played the demo about a week ago and i couldn't find a single game without lag.

I found the demo to be really laggy as well but the game works fine for me online and I wouldn't have the best connection either.

That demo is trash. The actual game is great as far as speed and latency is concerned. I thought it was weird that you'd try to advertise your game, with a terrible demo like that.

Over XboxLive, There's no lag at all as long as you start a game and set it to Local Connection NOT Dedicated Server. For some reason the Dedicated Server games are the only ones I expierence any sort of lag on.

@whylekat
if you're hosting the game on a local server no shit you don't see any lag because YOU'RE the host. And if you don't have a damn good internet connection then anyone joining your games will experience more lag than a dedicated server game.

Did anyone honestly buy Left 4 Dead 2 on 360 without an Xbox LIVE Gold account?

I hope not. It is essentially multiplayer only. The campaign is about all you can do, and its not that fun by yourself.

Haven't had a gold account since July, got L4D2 for xmas. Was thinking "well shit, what's the point?" - Guess now I get to play it ;)

That reminds me... I need to renew my prescription (pills here) to Live... Hell at least it's cheaper than WoW! ;)

Wait, what?

...you have to PAY for Xbox Live Gold in order to play multiplayer games online?

I thought you were only playing for some special perks like, I udnno, party chat and Gold-only contests/promotions/demos/DLC....

That's redonkulous... so, for example, if someone buys Final Fantasy 11 on the 360 (this is all hypothetical, of course) they would have to pay a monthly for Gold AND the monthly for the MMO. Insane.

I forgot to ask: Is PSN free or is that monthly, too?

Nah I had FF11 for a while... all you need is silver and the FF11 subscription... the only chat you get free is private chat which sucks since there's always a couple of friends online in a party (like 3-4). Although I have Steam and play Tf2 on there occasionally with the setting turned to low/medium.

you normally pay a yearly fee for gold. and anyone that shops around a little can get it for $20 a year by shopping sales or hitting up Ebay/Craigslist. regular price is $50 so either way its less than $5 a month, and if your smart its less than $2 a month. with how good the service is? its worth it.

@Phix post #2

we've been trolled.

Multiplayer on PSN is free (at least for now)

The Xbox 360 version of Final Fantasy 11 does not require an Xbox Live Gold account to play.

Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_XI

4 years late.

"Multiplayer on PSN is free (at least for now)"

And it will remain that way.

@Ashitaka: Well, yeah it will remain free to play and for everything you currently have. But in case you hadn't heard, they are talking about subscription plans for extra content.

You get what you pay for.

"You get what you pay for."

so you pay for cross game chat and a party system?

you can get everything else they offer for free elsewhere, you got a great deal man!

That is you JUST learning that you need to pay?
What is this? 2006?

You cant get Gold for $20 a year, what are you talking about? $35 is common and very rarely you can get it for $30.

Have you been in a coma for the last four years?

*sees L4D2 in gamestop

Ah, this multiplayer focused gane will go great with my non-multiplayer account!

The gamestop employee will likely recommend some shadowrun and ODST to go with that awesome silver account.

Gotta hand it to Shadowrun bots though, they mean deadly serious business even if they only have a one-track mind. You could squeeze a few ounces of fun from it offline.

God I miss that game, hope the community is still there when I get back =(

Still play the xbox version of Shadowrun myself, Granger. Usually do about 10+ hours a month it seems. Fun ass game, one that would have really benefited from some DLC.

WHY ISN'T JOYSTIQ LETTING ME COMMENT?????!!!!!!!

And of course, my comment goes through.

What I was about to say is that I'm proud to have a Silver account. It reminds me that I don't give in to Microsoft's BS.

And I'm proud to have one.

It reminds me that I'm having 10x more fun playing games than you.

I guess I am even more privileged... I have a Gold (main) and 2 silvers (one little bro's and the other just for back up/etc)

Why would anybody buy L4D2 on Xbox and not have a gold account anyway? I know some people probably get sucked in by ads or nice boxes, but those are also the people that never probably see this story or anything on Live talking about it.

I was thinking the same thing too, but as a guy posted up top, Some people who only have Silver accounts and get L4D2 for Christmas or something, this will give them opportunity and hopefully a nudge to convince them to get Gold.

Will they be lowering the price of gold to accommodate this?

Example, pay £5 to get a month of XBL, now this month one will have paid £5 for a month minus 2 days for free

No, because this is JUST L4D2 free for that weekend. You don't get any other gold perks (like playing any other game)

WHY IS JOYSTIQ'S COMMENT BOARD SO BROKEN???!!!!!

THERE IT GOES AGAIN!

Anyway, I'd like to reply to Vcize:

Well, that also reminds me that people like you think it's justifiable to pay to play online. Even after so many people paid for that expensive wireless adaptor, that $300 console, that expensive controller, games, and accessories, and now they want us to pay to play?! Utter bull crap, those pricks, who just had to nearly ruin an awesome console, won't get another cent out of me to play online, I can assure you that.

XBL makes the games I play at least 5-10x more enjoyable than I would have without them.

For $2/month, not only is XBL worth it, but it's one of the best values of anything I've ever purchased.

For the price of one two hour movie, I can instead have a year's worth of thousands of hours of pure enjoyment.

I would pay a lot more than $25/year for XBL, with as much fun as it brings me compared to the other archaic online systems out there that I have used previously.

Vcize, $25 a year? I agree with your points completely but that's ridiculous. Maybe you found a card for that price but realistically the cheapest you can find them in sales is $30, and $35 is much more common.

I played the demo of this on the 360 and wondered how much more difficult the game must be for those playing on the console. Mainly because of the fast enemies, and with a mouse plus keyboard, you have much better precision, and speed.

After playing on expert for a while, last night I went back and played through one of the campaigns on normal (hard rain).

We had myself, who I would say is average at the game, one of my friends who I would say is very good, my wife who had never played before in her life and doesn't really play games, and a bot. So not exactly the most stellar lineup.

We beat hard rain on normal in 42 minutes with a combined 1 incap, and my health never left the green throughout the entire campaign.

All it takes is a little teamwork, and as a former PC-only gamer while there's no arguing that a KB/mouse is more precise (it most certainly is), once you get used to the gamepad it is way, WAY closer to being just as good than PC gamers will ever give it credit for.

You make it seem as if the controller is a stiff piece of shit, sure nothing like a mouse, but it's nothing like you are making it seem.

And this is one of many reasons why I'm not renewing my XBL Gold subscription. If they're going to continue to have free weekends then why pay for it?

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Left 4 Dead 2 goes free-to-play on Xbox Live next weekend

Left 4 Dead 2

Reader Comments (72)

Posted: Jan 10th 2010 11:32AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 10th 2010 11:33AM TheMainProtagonist said

Posted: Jan 10th 2010 3:41PM kevlar said

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Posted: Jan 10th 2010 8:20PM Vcize said

Posted: Jan 10th 2010 9:03PM stoneNboneCDXX said

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Posted: Jan 10th 2010 11:42AM Accessgranted said

Posted: Jan 10th 2010 11:51AM (Unverified) said

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Posted: Jan 10th 2010 11:55AM Accessgranted said

Posted: Jan 10th 2010 11:56AM SmilinGoat said

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Posted: Jan 10th 2010 11:59AM TheNewNerd said

Posted: Jan 10th 2010 12:00PM Waxx said

Posted: Jan 10th 2010 12:04PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 10th 2010 12:12PM Ashitaka said

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Posted: Jan 10th 2010 2:27PM Katana Master said

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Posted: Jan 10th 2010 1:03PM Shadowbender said

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Posted: Jan 10th 2010 1:18PM Vcize said

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