Left 4 Dead 3 teased by Valve leak

To be honest, we'd assumed Left 4 Dead was... erm, dead. Valve's co-op shooter had great success with its first two games, but with Left 4 Dead 2 bowing out in 2009 and Turtle Rock releasing Back 4 Blood as a spiritual successor, most had buried the idea of Left 4 Dead 3.

The zombie shooter scene has come a long way since the original Left 4 Dead launched in 2008, with The Last of Us reinventing survival horrors, the ongoing success of the Resident Evil games, and a string of lacklustre outings like World War Z.

What is the Left 4 Dead 3 leak?

Even though we assumed the industry had moved on from Left 4 Dead, a Valve data mine suggests the developer is about to drag Left 4 Dead from the grave. We've previously covered the whispers of CS:GO 2, and in the same leaks, there's a hidden line of code that reads "left4dead3."

The leak was highlighted on Twitter by Valve fanatic Gabe Follower and soon set tongues wagging. It would be odd for another game to use left4dead3 as a placeholder, leading to wild speculation the threequel is in the works with the Source 2 engine.

Then again, it's unclear why Left 4 Dead 3 would be tied to CS:GO, leading to others suggesting Valve is just having fun - knowing the reference would be found.

What do we know about Left 4 Dead 3?

To this day, Left 4 Dead 2 is still ranking highly in the Steam charts, while there's been a continuous flow of updates to keep things fresh. After a long period of absence, we had The Last Stand DLC in 2020, which seemed to round off the story.

It was also in 2020 that Valve issued a clear statement to IGN, explaining that Left 4 Dead 3 wasn't in development. The developer reiterated, "We did briefly explore some Left 4 Dead next opportunities a few years ago. But we are absolutely not working on anything L4D related now, and haven't for years."

Valve News Network shared some leaked concept art reportedly from Left 4 Dead 3, but whatever happened and why the project didn't move forward, the latest leaks are the closest we've got to an actual update in a while.