Back 4 Blood Is Being Beaten On Steam By The 11-Year-Old Left 4 Dead 2

Back 4 Blood is the shiny new zombie-killing game in town. Developed by Turtle Rock Studios and considered a spiritual successor to the Left 4 Dead games, it’s spent the month since its release satisfying gamers with intense undead action and tight team-play. But despite its success, Back 4 Blood is still being beaten by the now eleven-year-old Left 4 Dead 2.

But this isn’t necessarily a death knell for the new game, as there’s a number of factors at play here. First up is that a huge amount of Steam users already own Left 4 Dead 2, it has just been on deep discount for Steam’s Halloween sale (it’s $10 even without a sale), and has been straight-up given away for free by Valve a couple of times.

Meanwhile, Back 4 Blood is $59.99 and still building its player base. In addition, it’s on Xbox Game Pass, meaning many PC players will opt to play it there as part of their subscription rather than buy it separately.

Taking all that into account, the fact that Left 4 Dead 2 is sitting pretty on 38,000 peak concurrent players over Back 4 Blood‘s 32,000 means the newer game is actually doing rather well and is making way more money.

For me, the two Left 4 Dead games will always have a special place in my heart, though after blasting my way through those maps hundreds of times, I’m very much enjoying Back 4 Blood updating and remixing the formula. The newer game could use some tweaks when it comes to spawning zombies behind you and the number of special zombies thrown at you in later stages, but I’m confident patches will address this.

So whether you’re sticking with the classics or heading for the new pastures of Back 4 Blood, fighting for survival against the undead horde never felt so good.