“In the first two months of “Left 2 Dead”’s release, 28, 981, 249, 043 zombies have been shot, bludgeoned, chainsawed and killed – or, for our younger readers, taken to a farm where they can frolic and shuffle around forever,” the company wrote on its official blog last Thursday. “You read that correctly: 28 BILLION. To put that number in perspective: The entire population of the planet has been zombified and killed 4.26 times. With the average height of a zombie being around 6 feet, if you stacked them end to end they would circle the globe 1, 3222 times. If you placed 28, 981, 248, 043 rulers end to end, they would reach 28, 981, 248, 043 feet in the sky. In short: That is a bucketload of dead zombies. Nice job, everyone.”

Fans of the games needn’t worry that the fictional world of the series is likely to run out of the undead any time soon, however, the blog assuring “Don’t worry, we’ll make more”. They’re not kidding, either, with Valve also announcing plans to release new DLC for the original game in addition to the “The Passing DLC” for “Left for Dead 2”. A comic book version – which will “bridge the gap” between the first and sequel games – is also in preparation.

Holtman noted in the interview, which was primarily concerned with the ease with which updates can be pushed to consumers via Steam. “That’s small and big developers, and they should actually try to challenge their audience, not avoid something that might annoy them. Not make something safe, narrow. “Oh my gosh, it’s got to fit everybody.”” Holtman added that “The nice thing about a connected user base on something like Steam is that you don’t have to consider them all. You can find the niches that maybe enjoyed a part of the game that annoyed a lot of others, and get their feedback and see what happens, because that is going to help everybody.”

In the same interview, Holtman also addresses the controversy that has erupted in some circles, which has alleged a conflict of interest between Valve and Steam, a criticism Holtman sees as naïve. “I think that’s short sighted,” he says. “If we launched a title that began to fail or was middling and all we did was say well, we’re going to overtake the marketing channel, it just doesn’t make a lot of sense… If all (Steam) showed was what we had, sure we could turn the front page into Valve games all the time, but (then) people are going to look at it and say it isn’t giving me the right information… Our customers like it.”

Now, Valve have confirmed that the game, which was released just two weeks ago on both the PC and the Xbox 360, has sold a combined total of more than two million units. Exact sales figures have not yet been released, and it is unclear how many of the PC units sold were done so via the digital distribution hub Steam, but nonetheless, the game is a phenomenal success and has apparently already doubled the total sales of the original “Left 4 Dead” in just two weeks on the shelves of retailers, which Valve claimed to be around two and a half million units in total back in March. “Left 4 Dead” continues with the same winning formula as of the original, with players trying to survive the midst of a zombie apocalypse with a variety of weapons at their disposal ranging from chainsaws to rifles.

The sequel features five all new campaign maps, all of which can be played in five different modes, resulting in a very different game each time out, and has extensive online co-op support. Arguably Valve’s most successful previous series was the “Halo” franchise, but “Left 4 Dead” looks to be well on the way to claiming that title for itself.

“Don’t be scared of a microphone,” Faliszek urged. “You guys are notorious non-talkers on both 360 and PC. Americans are just chattering away, working as a team. If you want to work together as a team, you’ve got to talk! You can go into a random 360 game on US servers and it’s crazy talk. It’s fun. I think a lot of people knock that community but again and again I’m surprised by how fun that is. I’ve played expert campaigns where by the end of it we’re best buddies… Realism mode (in “Left 4 Dead 2”) will prod you – you have to talk. If you don’t talk you’re not going to make it. Instead of being harder, Realism’s actually more challenging as a team because you have to communicate… We’ll see if maybe that stimulates that British sternness.”

Faliszek’s comments have been ridiculed by British gamers, the majority of the responses being that eighty percent of the American “chatter” is unhelpful nonsense – and usually highly offensive as well. “Some games I don’t even bother plugging the mic in,” one Brit gamer noted in a post that summed up the general mood. “It’s not that I am shy, or uncommunicative… By and large, it’s because of the large amounts of cretins online who hurl homophobic, racist, bigoted remarks around liberally. Unfortunately, even by the law of averages, inevitably these are mostly American… Get me in a game with friends, and I’ll chat away. Put me in a game with a bunch of abusive yank pre-pubescents… not so much.”

“It was great,” he notes. “It’s a great event and it’s great knowing that the fans vote for you and everything… It was a surprise.” As for “Left 4 Dead 2”, the feedback for the recently unveiled demo version of the game has, Faliszek says, “been really positive. I think the gore system has probably made the biggest impact. We purposefully wanted to deliver something really short, just like a taste. We wanted to tease a little.”

Faliszek says that speculation about linking up the online communities for the original and the new game was misplaced, however. “One of the things is direct connection doesn’t really work because there’s just been so much work done with the underlying systems. We’ve radically changed what the game is. In “Left 4 Dead” we started with two programmers, then we had three, five and at the very end it ballooned. With “Left 4 Dead 2” we started with six programmers out of the gate because we wanted to redesign the systems… So these underlying systems really changed the game and we can’t simply put something back in the old. But if you’re online playing “Left 4 Dead 2” you can actually see your friends playing “Left 4 Dead” and on the PC it’s seamless – if you own it you just can press start and join a game with them.”

“There’s so much conflict of interest there that it’s horrid,” he claims. “It’s actually really, really dangerous for the rest of the industry to allow Valve to win.” He says that while he himself personally trusts Valve, because of his prior relationship with them over expansions such as “Opposing Force”, many in the industry do not feel the same way.

“I love Valve games, and I do business with the company,” he claims, “but I’m just saying, Steam isn’t the answer. Steam helps us as customers, but it’s also a money grab, and Valve is exploiting a lot of people in a way that isn’t really fair.

Valve is taking a larger share than it should be for the service it’s providing. It’s exploiting a lot of the small guys. For us big guys, we’re going to sell the units and it will be fine.”

 He says he believes that it would be healthier all around if Steam split from Valve and stood on its own. “It would be much better if Steam was its own business,” he claims. “I’m cool with it being a digital retailer, but I want that to be their only business. And then I’ll really trust them.”