Valve writer Chet Faliszek recently spoke to VG247 about the Left4Dead series, among other things, and an interesting point that came up was the overall sales figures for the games.
That is to say, they’ve been fantastic. Selling 12 million units thus far, Faliszek speaks about how” “letting people play the game – Left 4 Dead is a good example – is much better. All of our pre-release stuff is designed to just let people play it.
“We just let the game speak for itself because the internet has made this thing where, you can’t pull the wool over people’s eyes any more. They’re going to know you’re hyping. But when a game does really well at pre-release, they’re going to know that you’re not just talking a bunch of PR crap. I mean, the Left 4 Dead series has now sold over 12 million copies.”
“That’s amazingly cool, and that wasn’t because I was out there like, ‘This game is amazing! Buy it!’ Seeing Counter-Strike be the number one PSN title was awesome, and you know it’s just because of people reacting to the game.”