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Turtle Rock Studios' Back 4 Blood has been not-so-subtly positioning itself as a spiritual successor to their beloved Left 4 Dead titles, to much celebrated fanfare. However, the official Turtle Rock Twitter account has recently confirmed two bits of news that directly contradict with how the Left 4 Dead series worked. The first is that a persistent internet connection will be required to play, even if you just want to play alone. While online cooperative and PvP modes are essential to this type of experience, Left 4 Dead allowed players to play on their own or with a friend split-screen without being connected to the internet. That second option is the other bit of news to come out of the Turtle Rock Twitter account; there will be no options for split-screen co-op in Back 4 Blood. While Turtle Rock notes that they're looking into ways to support offline play in the future, and that they'd "love to" support split-screen co-op, there are no firm details on if or when these changes will be implemented.

Back 4 Blood launches October 12, 2021.

We're looking into ways we could support offline for the future but you will need an internet connection to play at launch.

— Turtle Rock Studios (@TurtleRock) June 13, 2021

We'd love to support this in the future but won't be launching with it.

— Turtle Rock Studios (@TurtleRock) June 13, 2021

 

[Danker301090]

Just sounds like a copy DRM move. Make the game run online only so no repackers can have a go of cracking it.

 

[spotanjo3]

Bad decision then. I am going to skip it.

 

[duwen]

Not 4 Me

 

[kevin corms]

Wow, even console games are releasing unfinished now.

They always have been, pc gamers have much higher standards though. I will point out console gamers have much higher standards than they used to, something like Goldeneye would never fly now.

 

[slimbizzy]

that's too bad. looks like i wont be getting this game. very poor decision the devs have made.

 

[JFizDaWiz]

[redacted]

 

[gnmmarechal]

Yuck, fuck that

 

[Pookette]

Developers still putting faith in ANY kind of DRM in 2021?

Oh well, I guess the developers can keep their love affairs with valve's and epic's and whoever other shitty company's game stores, account-based authentication and online-only gameplay to themselves.

 

[Pipistrele]

Not to defend the move or anything, but did anyone ever really cared about offline modes in original L4D games?

 

[TemporalWolf]

And just like that it's one to cross off my list. Why can't developers look at what works with PEOPLE and go from there.

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Not to defend the move or anything, but did anyone ever really cared about offline modes in original L4D games?

Think you'll find they did, it was amazing fun and two player was always good.

 

[DuoForce]

Good thing I'm not buying this joke of a game

 

[FAST6191]

I care about LAN and local co-op in all games and it is something I seek out to this day. Given l4d came when the gamecube, PS2 and xbox were still in recent memory and were maybe not as stuffed with such things as the 32 bit and 16 bit eras that preceded them but still the order of the day then probably get a few more there as well.
I like being able to have friends over and play games and to play games with housemates without everybody having to have a console each, a copy of the game each, an online subscription each, maybe suffer all trying to use the internet at once if in the same house, multiple screens and eh... Now LAN has a few of those problems* but still missing some of the major ones and local co-op amounts to "have another controller" (though at current prices and availability for controllers...).

*though two xboxes, a LAN cable, downstairs and upstairs, in this case 6 player halo as there were not enough to make 8 players... wonderful times.

As regards left4dead I did splitscreen on the PC version, and I have very fond memories of local co-op on the 360 of l4d and l4d2, and local co-op with splitscreen but also an internet player (in that case another friend we had spent years playing local co-op with back in school).

 

[machomuu]

Alright so two things. First, a bunch of y'all are gonna be buying this when it comes out even if you say you aren't. If you don't it's probably because you weren't going to to begin with, because let's be real, neither of these things won't affect the grand majority of players. If you think this is raising any sort of red flag, it's not, since apart from the fact that these are two tiny tweets that barely expound upon anything, they have genuinely no bearing on the game itself.

Like, that's silly.

And second, it doesn't say anything about not supporting local co-op, just that there's no split-screen. This is more wishful thinking than anything else but only because I don't really know too much about how often LAN even is available in titles these days, but at the same time it's honestly better to just stick to what's actually reported.

 

[RedBlueGreen]

wtf, that sounds like the basics to me and they have to patch it at a later point? Maybe I am too out of touch or something, but they make it sound like it’s witchcraft.

A lot of developers don't do split screen co-op anymore. It's pretty normal for PC games to lack it, but in recent years a lot of console games lack it too and people rationalize it by saying "games are more demanding now so consoles can't handle it because they they have to run two instances of the game". This might be true for some Switch ports, but there's no reason for most games on the other consoles to lack split screen.

 

[Pookette]

Alright so two things. First, a bunch of y'all are gonna be buying this when it comes out even if you say you aren't.

That's that the thing that will get me every single time. People say they'll boycott, but then immediately end up buying the damn game they were going to boycott.

No wonder the PC has been constantly held back by the likes of valve games store and epic games store, or why microtransactions and lootboxes are stuffed.

 

[RedBlueGreen]

Wow, even console games are releasing unfinished now.

They have been for a while.

Alright so two things. First, a bunch of y'all are gonna be buying this when it comes out even if you say you aren't. If you don't it's probably because you weren't going to to begin with, because let's be real, neither of these things won't affect the grand majority of players. If you think this is raising any sort of red flag, it's not, since apart from the fact that these are two tiny tweets that barely expound upon anything, they have genuinely no bearing on the game itself.

Like, that's silly.

And second, it doesn't say anything about not supporting local co-op, just that there's no split-screen. This is more wishful thinking than anything else but only because I don't really know too much about how often LAN even is available in titles these days, but at the same time it's honestly better to just stick to what's actually reported.

https://back4blood.com/en-us/faq The FAQ says 4 players are supported in online co-op. That suggests there's no form of local co-op. The game will also need to be online at all times which means no LAN on PC at the very least if not all platforms. Them making no mention of local co-op means there likely isn't any (connecting with your friend in a private match doesn't count, local means either same console, or LAN/ad-hoc), and leaving it vague means that if there isn't local co-op they can say "we never said there was local co-op" to shrug off any criticism and not piss of shareholders. We know that Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment doesn't mind publishing mediocre games based on stuff like Scribblenauts Showdown and Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia.

No wonder the PC has been constantly held back by the likes of valve games store and epic games store, or why microtransactions and lootboxes are stuffed.

This is largely because publishers favour digital storefronts like these because they have their own DRM. Not the most effective but it saves the time it would take for the developers to make their own DRM and lets them save money if they don't want to license something like Denuvo.

Steam also has a lot of features people like, such as the community pages, the friend chat (which let's face it is pretty much on every installed storefront and has been a thing on consoles since at least the PS3 and 360), groups, big picture mode and controller mapping. Also Steam reviews but I'm not counting that as a positive since so many of them are bad or rate positively or negatively ironically and make ironic statements.

So regardless of whether or not people want to boycott them, they're forced to use digital storefronts on PC because there's really no other choice. The same reason even people who hate Windows still have it installed (even if it's dual booting just for games). It's pretty rare companies listen if it doesn't have a major impact on their revenue, regardless of how much complaining there is.

 

[Squidge]

Aw man. L4D2 is one of my mom's favorite games and we play it together all the time. she's gonna be really disappointed that there's no local co-op. This sucks.