How many copies did Left 4 Dead sell? — 2023 statistics

The Left 4 Dead franchise has sold over 70.9 million copies on Steam.

(Source: VG Insights)

• Left 4 Dead sold 13.2 million copies.
• Left 4 Dead 2 sold 57.7 million copies.

Since there are just two games in the series, with Back 4 Blood only being a spiritual successor developed by the same team that developed Left 4 Dead, there aren’t that many sales stats that we can pull for the franchise. In either case, from what we’ve gathered, Left 4 Dead has proven itself to be one of the greatest zombie-killing franchises to grace the gaming industry.

The Left 4 Dead franchise has earned $579.3 million on Steam.

(Source: VG Insights)

• Left 4 Dead earned $106.2 million.
• Left 4 Dead 2 earned $473.1 million.

With strong sales come strong profits, you can be sure of that. Left 4 Dead never really had the same level of praise and popularity as its successor, and that is evident when you look at the total revenue that both of the games generated for Valve. With nearly half a billion dollars generated, it is one of the most successful Valve singleplayer games ever.

The Left 4 Dead franchise has over 6 million cumulative hours on Twitch in their best years.

(Source: SullyGnome)

• Left 4 Dead had 321,781 hours watched in 2017.
• The game had 9,576 broadcasting hours.
• The game had 36 viewers on average.
• 1 channel was streaming the game on average.
• It had a viewer ratio of 33.6.
• Its max viewer count was 140,433.
• There were 2,474 broadcasters streaming the game.

• Left 4 Dead 2 had 5.7 million hours watched in 2021.
• The game had 610,134 broadcasting hours.
• The game had 658 viewers on average.
• 69 channels were streaming the game on average.
• It had a viewer ratio of 9.5.
• Its max viewer count was 108,971.
• There were 99,517 broadcasters streaming the game.

The streaming game is, in most cases, just as important to the gaming world as playing the games themselves is. In the case of the Left 4 Dead franchise, it has gathered quite a few hours watched, but not as much as some newer games or even games that came out at the same time did. Nevertheless, the hours watched that the franchise does have are decent and show us that the game is still quite popular.

Left 4 Dead 2 sold over 2 million copies in two weeks in 2009.

(Source: VentureBeat)

• The game performed well along its competition, Modern Warfare 2.
• Its sales were boosted by Black Friday, with over 1 million members signing up to play the game over Xbox Live.
• The entire franchise reached 12 million copies sold in 2020.

Whenever you see news about Left 4 Dead 2 back when it was first released, all the talk about it was regarding the fact that it was taking the gaming world by storm, and the sales in 2009 were dominantly impressive, with some days recording a 3000% rise in sales seemingly overnight. Yet another way of highlighting the popularity of Left 4 Dead 2 in its prime.

Left 4 Dead 3 is not in development.

(Sources: GamingBible, VideoGames)

• Valve announced that a third Left 4 Dead game is not in development and that they would like the fanbase to stop asking for one.
• Left 4 Dead 3 was leaked in a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive data breach, which sparked interest online.
• Left 4 Dead 2 was supposed to be a test game for the Source engine, and a third game was never in the cards.

And here continues the ever-present trend of Valve games never getting a third installment, as is apparent with games like Portal, Dota, and Counter-Strike. Recently, after some CS2 data was leaked online, some individuals pointed out that there were lines in the code talking about products by the name of “left4dead3”. When confronted with this, Valve developers stated that fans should forget about the possibility of any such game coming out and that they should stop asking for it. A bit harsh, but expected given the fervor of devoted fans.

Back 4 Blood did not manage to net more players than Left 4 Dead 2.

(Source: Kotaku, NME)

• Quite a few players returned to Left 4 Dead 2 following the release of Back 4 Blood.
• The main reason for so many players returning to the game was that it was discounted to $1.99.
• 23,816 players were logged into Left 4 Dead 2, while 17,474 were logged into Back 4 Blood.

And finally, we have some stats concerning the player counts of both Left 4 Dead 2 and Back 4 Blood, where we can see that despite being a very popular game that came out near the end of 2021, it still did not manage to beat the much older game for total players. Naturally, popularity is not the only reason, with price playing a key role, as Left 4 Dead 2 is oftentimes below $6, while Back 4 Blood had a steep price tag of $60.

To sum up

Okay, so that’s all we have to say about the cult franchise that is Left 4 Dead! As you can see from the information we’ve presented, Left 4 Dead 2 is much more popular than its predecessor and has made massive strides in the gaming community, establishing itself as one of the best choices when one is looking for a top-notch zombie survival game. We hope that everything we’ve had to say on the matter is clear and that all of your questions have been answered!