Left 4 Dead 3 tease surfaces online

It’s been 14 long years since Left 4 Dead 2 was released. In that time period, I finished school, went to university, and got a job writing about video games. The Left 4 Dead franchise hasn’t been quite so productive though. In fact, all we’ve had to pacify us is a slow trickle of DLCs and by slow trickle, I mean we had to wait eight years for 2020’s The Last Stand - and that was partially a community-made effort.

Of course, we’ve had Back 4 Blood too - Left 4 Dead’s spiritual successor - but there’s no denying that there’s a major appetite for a new entry in the main Left 4 Dead series. As a fun fact, did you know that originally, Valve didn’t want to include zombies in the game. Weird, right? While we’re still awaiting the announcement of a third game, a tease has been found - in a Counter-Strike 2 datamine, of all places.

Take a look at Back 4 Blood in action. The title is available as a part of PlayStation Plus’ extra tier catalogue and with Xbox Game Pass.

This is all mildly confusing as technically, Counter-Strike 2 doesn’t exist yet either but allow me to explain. CS:GO players have been uncovering Counter-Strike 2 files during CS:GO datamines for quite some time. While we may not have official word from Valve, the abundance of prevalence all but seemingly confirms the existence of Counter-Strike 2. It was during one of these datamines that one user stumbled across a reference to Left 4 Dead 3. Could that be on its way too?

As reported by Metro, Twitter dataminer gabefollower took to the site to write, “Something weird just happened again. Looks like CS:GO Source 2 executables going around, someone just sent me them, and it’s legit.” In the accompanying screenshots, you can see a line of code that clearly says ‘left4dead3’. Interesting, very interesting.

Of course it’s not much to go on, but we are seeing a trend in which studios are going all-out on reliable and familiar franchises. There’s Naughty Dog and The Last of Us, Konami and Silent Hill, Ubisoft and Assassin’s Creed … Perhaps we can add Valve and Left 4 Dead to that list.