

Left 4 Dead 2 is free right now on steam - ddorian43
http://store.steampowered.com/app/550/?snr=1_7_15__13

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shawn-furyan
Ah, that explains why they've been DDOSed for a couple hours now.

edit: I'm not implying that Steam is being attacked, here I intend to say that
the DDOS is organically driven by high demand for the content.

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kbar13
Are you sure they are getting attacked? Is there a status posting somewhere
that reflects that assumption?

It's more likely that their servers are overloaded from the number of users
trying to grab L4D2 along with the other winter sale items. Steam store has
been iffy the past couple of days already.

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shawn-furyan
I didn't say it was an attack. It's a distributed denial of service via demand
for the service rather than malicious intent.

edit: Perhaps I should have said "organically DDOSed" or something to that
effect to better signal that I was using the term in a casual manner somewhat
divorced from its malicious origin.

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wavefunction
Valve coming with a _real_ growth hack.

I'm putting this one over the Orange box.

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mdesq
Their announcement said you have to install it. I wonder if that has anything
to do with their servers being overloaded at the moment. It's a sizable
download.

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bdz
You don't _have to_ install it and finish it. Just start installing to add to
your account.

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kbar13
I wonder if an influx of gamers will spur valve devs to work on the game, like
with CSGO

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drawkbox
Pretty sure Left 4 Dead 2 is the next free-to-play for Valve and this is an
initial test. They are probably adding items and upgrades soon, but they do it
very tastefully like in TF2 and CS.

They probably have a growth curve that starts initially as a pay game, then on
taper, open it up, then add in items/content and the markets. Very smart and
they have done them one at a time. The markets and goods actually make the
game fun to go back to and don't bend game balancing too much, but add a layer
of fun. They are pretty much the model for good in-app purchases on desktop.

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bdz
No, if anything goes F2P in the near future is CSGO. It's already have items,
market, growing community, huge competitive scene... etc. And it's updated
weekly (unlike L4D2)

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sodafountan
That's a great marketing strategy. They don't lose any money because the game
is developed in house and in return they get an influx in traffic on a day
when a lot of people just received a lot of money as a gift. Well played
Valve.

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gorbachev
That assumes the Steam Store is up and running accepting orders. But since
it's down due to the amount of traffic caused by this promotion, they're
losing quite a bit of money right now.

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ddorian43
And their servers are overloaded.

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zemo
This is great but I don't understand why this broke other properties. E.g.,
when this announcement went out, the dota2 matchmaking service fell over. Very
frustrating.

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svenkatesh
Maybe some of the infrastructure is shared (i.e. the pipes that serve L4D2
downloads also services Dota2)

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ddorian43
Does any of the consoles have free AAA games?

