Valve has gone on record regarding rumors of possible Left 4 Dead 3 development news, announcing that the beloved zombie survival game will not be getting a third entry into the series any time soon. Left 4 Dead 3 rumors began to crop up when leaked renders of what appeared to be a third game suddenly showed up online, and with the recent development of Half-Life: Alyx, fans began to believe there was a chance the company would resurrect another long-forgotten Valve favorite.
Left 4 Dead was a ground-breaking multiplayer title in its day, revitalizing a genre that had become fairly stagnant with paint-by-numbers online shooters at the time. While the series has its fair share of gunplay, it also prioritizes teamwork with friends (or strangers) in an attempt to stave off human extinction at the hands of several different zombie outbreak scenarios. Left 4 Dead 2 released in 2009 to critical acclaim, becoming one of the most popular co-op games of all-time - and since then, Valve hasn't seemed to be in a rush to produce a follow-up, which has puzzled fans and critics alike.
Unfortunately, a new interview with Valve developers Chris Remo and Robin Walker with absolutely" not working on anything related to the franchise - and that's been elaborated on now in the wake of those new rumors. Walker covered what happened on the images that spurred on rumors of Left 4 Dead 3 development being in the works:
"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."
That's about as clear a stance as a company can have on Left 4 Dead 3 development, so it seems like for the foreseeable future, fans should dismiss any rumors about the series coming back from the dead as pure speculation. Walker further twisted the knife for fans while stating that the company looked at different IPs for Source 2, and that Left 4 Dead was one of them, but nothing reached a point where the team felt it was worth pursuing. It's yet another baffling decision from a company that seems all too willing to create beloved IPs and then abandon them at the peak of their popularity, which happened with Half-Life as well.
Of course, Half-Life: Alyx was just created, and it's evidence that Valve isn't entirely resistant to circling back on titles that worked and bringing them back - albeit in unexpected ways. With a bigger focus on VR coming from Valve with the advent of Half-Life: Alyx, too, Left 4 Dead 3 VR could feasibly be a project for the company far in the future. It's not the most comforting thought - many fans would have loved to see a new title five years ago, let alone five years from now - but it's one to hold onto for fans of the co-op zombie experience that was the inspiration for many other great titles.
Left 4 Dead 3 is not currently in development.
Source: IGN
