Back in 2009, Ars wrote about what was being reported as a leaked trailer for the then-upcoming Left 4 Dead 2, saying the footage “looks like it’s straight from a high-gloss action movie.” Today, we need to offer an important update to this crucial, 17-year-old story: The trailer “leak” was orchestrated by Valve itself. That news comes courtesy of former Valve writer Chet Faliszek, who said in a newly posted video about cut lines in the game that “for Left 4 Dead 2 with the ESRB… we leaked our trailer ahead of time because they wouldn’t let us release the trailer.” Faliszek is referring to the Entertainment Software Rating Board, the self-regulating industry group that, since 1994, has offered sometimes questionable age-appropriateness ratings for thousands of games submitted to its purview. And looking back at the “leaked” Left 4 Dead 2 trailer on YouTube, you could argue that it falls afoul of guidelines that prohibited 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.” At the time, Valve had some recent firsthand experience with the ESRB’s sometimes onerous enforcement of its marketing standards. In 2007, the ratings group requested the removal of trailers for D3’s Dark Sector and 2K’s The Darkness after they had already been shared across the web (behind age gates on most major news sites).
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Ars Technica Gaming