Back in October 2009, Valve secretly leaked its own trailer for Left 4 Dead 2 to bypass strict marketing rules imposed by the Entertainment Software Rating Board. Former Valve writer Chet Faliszek revealed the maneuver in a video discussion, shedding light on behind-the-scenes content battles with industry regulators.
A ratings board wouldn't let Valve release a trailer
For PC gamers active around October 2009, the appearance of an early promotional clip for Left 4 Dead 2 felt like a traditional industry data breach. The footage, which Ars Technica originally described at the time as looking straight out of a high-gloss action movie, was actually planted by the development team itself.
Project lead and writer Chet Faliszek admitted in a YouTube confessional detailing cut game lines that the studio took matters into its own hands after hitting a regulatory wall. According to Faliszek, “…especially for Left 4 Dead 2, with the ESRB, we…we leaked the ES — we leaked our trailer ahead of time, because they wouldn’t let us release the trailer. I’ll just admit that, I think we can’t get in trouble for that now. It’s like 20 years ago. Um, so it’s funny seeing leaked stuff now because, yeah, you can’t look — I don’t think you can look for ‘leaked Left 4 Dead 2 trailer’ because it’s just going to be, eh, it’s lost now. But yeah, it originally got leaked because we — we had this with the ESRB, and so that’s why, like a lot of the language got to get toned down…”
Valve’s Left 4 Dead 2 team leaked its own
The Entertainment Software Rating Board is the self-regulating industry group that, since 1994, has offered age-appropriateness ratings for thousands of games submitted to its purview. At the time, any publisher that wanted space on major retailers’ shelves needed to submit to the ESRB’s standards, which included strict guidelines on how companies could market their games. Looking back at the trailer on YouTube, it could be argued that it fell afoul of guidelines prohibiting trailers with graphic and/or excessive depictions
of violence… the use of weapons… [and] blood and/or gore
as well as those with crude and/or offensive language.
Valve had recent firsthand experience with the ESRB’s enforcement of marketing standards earlier in 2009, when the board requested a change to a promotional image featuring a hand with three gnawed-off fingers and two intact digits indicating the sequel’s number. To pass the ESRB’s muster, Valve shot a new version with two of those fingers back in place, curled down, which eventually appeared on the game’s box art. Faliszek previously pointed out that people are torn apart using a chainsaw in the game, while bitten-off fingers on the logo crossed a line.
Valve Orchestrated Left 4 Dead 2 Trailer Leak, Ars
The ratings group also restricted game trailers during that era, having requested the removal of trailers for D3’s Dark Sector and 2K’s The Darkness in 2007 after they were shared across the web behind age gates. In a statement at the time, the ESRB’s Patricia Vance stated that the mere presence of an age gate does not permit a publisher to put whatever content it wishes into a trailer.
Regulatory friction also impacted the writing process within the game itself. To achieve the rating Valve wanted for the first Left 4 Dead title, Faliszek had to cut lines from the script, including references to drugs and alcohol. Among the casualties was a favorite line from Francis during the Dead Air campaign, which would have had Francis remark, This is the most sober I've ever been in an airport,
but it was cut due to the alcohol reference.
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