Valve Didn't Want Zombies In 'Left 4 Dead', It Turns Out

If we played a game of word association and I said Left 4 Dead, you’d probably say zombies. The game is set after a zombie outbreak and sees the player fighting - you guessed it - zombies. There is no Left 4 Dead without zombies - except there almost was.

Left 4 Dead’s outbreak follows the spread of the ‘Green Flu’ which quickly transforms humans into mindless killing machines but during Left 4 Dead’s development, there was a hot debate over whether to even include zombies in the game.

Since the release of Left 4 Dead, zombies have certainly made a comeback - in the world of entertainment that is, and thankfully not in real life. In case you missed it, The House of the Dead recently received a remake. Take a look below.

Valve president and co-founder Gabe Newell was very much against the inclusion of zombies as he thought the idea was too cheesy. Speaking to YouTuber Kiwi Talkz, Valve writer Chet Faliszek opened up about those early development discussions.

“Once I went to dinner with Gabe [Newell] and he was beating me up, [saying] that ‘If you look at zombie movies, Night of the Living Dead is about racism. Dawn of the Dead is about consumerism.’ [George Romero] had purposely made those movies about things kind of like, to talk about them, and [Newell asked] ‘What is your movie about? What is your game about? What’s your zombie story about?’” Faliszek said.

“I’m like, ‘Well, you know it’s about working together. It’s about the game itself, it’s a reflection of the game, of you know, in the zombie apocalypse what are you going to do? We’d kind of get pushed more and more because I remember [Newell] said ‘Well let’s not do zombies, zombies are just…cheesy, right? They’re just really cheesy.’”

Faliszek went on to note that major series like TV’s The Walking Dead which later popularised zombies had yet to come out so they were still associated with campy horror films. Thankfully, Newell was talked around and we’re glad he was because otherwise, we wouldn’t have the Left 4 Dead we know and love.