Back 4 Blood, the upcoming co-op zombie shooter which is meant to be a spiritual successor to Left 4 Dead, has been confirmed not to contain a fan-favorite mode from the Valve-published series. Specifically, that mode happens to be a Versus Campaign, which would allow players to play through the same missions from the main game against other human players. While the lack of this feature has seemingly upset many prospective Back 4 Blood players, though, developer Turtle Rock Studios still has another plan when it comes to PvP.
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News regarding the lack of a Versus Campaign in Back 4 Blood was recently shared in the game’s Discord server by one of the developers working on the project. When asked whether the game mode would be appearing, the developer in question from Turtle Rock clearly replied, “No.” Not long after this news was made clear, those on the Back 4 Blood subreddit began expressing their disappointment at the lack of this beloved feature from Left 4 Dead.
Although a further explanation from Turtle Rock for the lack of a Versus Campaign in Back 4 Blood wasn’t mentioned on Discord, in a recent interview with us here at ComicBook.com, the studio did shed some more light on this decision. Plainly, creative director Phil Robb said that the decision not to include a Versus Campaign purely was done to spice things up. “We don’t want to just do the same thing, right?” Robb mentioned of making Back 4 Blood almost too similar to Left 4 Dead. The bigger reason for this omission, however, seems to purely be due to the time it takes to play. “But, two: One of the things about the campaign PvP is that it’s a really big time commitment. I would say that most PvP games out there, you can jump in and have a few matches in 10, 15 minutes. So, it’s not as big of a time commitment,” Robb said.
In place of a Versus Campaign, Back 4 Blood will still feature a PvP mode known as Swarm. As Robb indicated, this mode is meant to be more bite-sized in nature and also allowed Turtle Rock to try something new. So if you’re still looking to take on your friends in a zombie versus survivor matchup, that option will be available.
At this moment, Back 4 Blood is available in a closed beta phase through the weekend. An open beta will then kick off next weekend on August 12. And as for the game as a whole, it’s slated to launch this fall on October 12.
