Payday: The Heist stole a lot of its mechanics from the Left 4 Dead franchise, and so when Overkill Software announced that they were working on an “in-depth collaboration” with Valve, only one blueprint was ever going to emerge – a Left 4 Dead prequel. However, it seems like there is no life to this rumour after all.
Speaking to PCGamesN at E3, Chet Falisznek, a writer for Valve, addressed this claim:
“We’re trying to be a little coy and a little fun because we want the communities to discover it, but those guys are still making Payday: The Heist, we’re still making Left 4 Dead. [The Project] is kind of akin to how in TF2 you might see some other games’ weapons get translated and put into that game. We’re doing something similar to that, but it’s a little bit more involved.”
This rather intriguing tease of a relationship that goes beyond mere TF2 items is yet to be expanded upon, but he did suggest that the clues as to what this project may be are already out there for the community to discover:
“I don’t want to give it away, because we want the community to explore and find it, but I want to make sure that people don’t think the prequel is coming. If that happens, then it will make this other thing we’re doing feel uncool, when the thing we’re doing is really cool. I mean, the problem is, if you make a rumour, and you can make the rumour anything, you’re going to make the rumour really, really cool. And that makes everything else sound less cool.”
As a fan of both franchises with a woefully inadequate collection of hats, I can’t wait to see what emerges from this cooperative vault.
