Turtle Rock developed the Original Left 4 Dead in 2008, inventing the modern 4-player co-op format. Games like Warhammer: Vermintide, the upcoming Rainbow Six Extraction, and Redfall might not exist without Turtle Rock’s earlier innovation. Given the genre’s popularity, it’s no surprise Turtle Rock threw its hat back into the ring with Back 4 Blood in October.
However, the spiritual successor is struggling to surpass the original series. Even twelve years after its release, Left 4 Dead 2 is still more popular on Steam than the just-released Back 4 Blood. In fact, the new game seems to have reignited players' passions for its 2009 predecessor.
Independent site SteamDB tracks the number of concurrent players on Steam games. It also allows users to compare player numbers of multiple Steam titles. Doing so for Back 4 Blood and Left 4 Dead 2 reveals something interesting. Back 4 Blood peaked on October 14th with about 25,500 players, surpassing the original Left 4 Dead’s all-time peak. However, that number fell off quickly, as Left 4 Dead 2 rises to meet it.
As of this writing, Left 4 Dead 2 has about 18,000 active players, while Back 4 Blood is just shy of 16,000 players. Meanwhile, the last 24 hours saw peaks of about 35,500 and 25,700 players, respectively. Left 4 Dead 2 also saw a massive spike on September 14th, eclipsing Back 4 Bloods’ all-time high.
It’s easy to infer that players’ anticipation for Back 4 Blood drove the spike in September. However, one would expect many of those players to migrate over to the new game. Unfortunately for Turtle Rock, that hasn’t happened. And while Left 4 Dead 2 has nowhere near as many players as its peak in September, it’s still trending upward, while Back 4 Blood only seems to lose players with time.
In fairness, it is worth remembering that these numbers are only for the games’ players on Steam. Back 4 Blood is also available on PlayStation and Xbox Consoles. There’s also the fact that only the older game runs on Mac and Linux in addition to Windows PC. Still, it’s not a great sign for Back 4 Blood.
The whole situation must be at least a little frustrating for Turtle Rock, who split from Valve in 2010. The company was known as Valve South at the time of the original game’s release. Valve retained the rights to Left 4 Dead and developed Left 4 Dead 2 in-house. While it’s possible that Back 4 Blood eventually turns things around, the games undoubtedly had an inauspicious first month.
Back 4 Blood is available on PC, PS4. PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S.
Source: SteamDB