Oh come on, even that huge “official” boycott of L4D2 has already dissipated. Remember a few weeks ago, when its leaders were taken to Valve and shown the game and they were impressed and called off the whole thing? There was a bit of controversy then, since some thought they have sold out, but by now all but the most deranged have put down arms.

As to that whole MS-points deal on XBL… well, didn’t you make a conscious choice to buy a console?

I play the single player and I find it highly playable. Apparently, this proves that a FPS’ played on a kiddie console with girlie game controllers are no match for a PC. LOL.

As for charging for L4D content on the kiddie console: GOOD! You already play for the priviledge of playing on XBL, so whats an additional $5, nUb?

Are you going to bitch about all the FREE user-made content that PC owners get too?

Single player unplayable? Teammates useless? Maybe it’s my style of play, but my teammates end up saving my butt from more hunters, boomers, and smokers than I can shake a boomstick at. The statistics at the end of each episode pretty much prove that without them I’d be dead. Most smokers shot, most boomers shot, most hunters shot, most damage done to a tank… every category except “most headshots” almost always belongs to my single-player teammates. So either they’re better than you think they are, or I suck more than they do. (Probably the latter.)

Alaric also pointed out that the “official” boycott of L4D2 had dissipated… in fact, more than a third of the boycotters said they’d buy L4D2 anyway, even BEFORE the leaders were taken to Valve and shown the game. Guess they don’t understand what “boycott” really means, huh?

(At least they’ve got a more valid reason for boycotting L4D2 than the pastor who called for a boycott of Toy Story. His reasons amounted to “Buzz is an obvious drug reference, Woody is an obvious sexual reference, and one of the characters, the etch-a-sketch, had TWO KNOBS.” My old radio has two knobs too, but you don’t see me calling for a boycott of Lenoxx, who manufactured it.)

First, I’ll respond to the comments above that didn’t make me think for a week about whether or not there was a way to respond without insulting the writer. Alaric, Marcus, you make excellent points.

I did make a conscious choice to buy a console from Microsoft, all the while knowing I’d have to pay for an annual gold membership. I assumed that actually meant I’d get downloadable content for free that PC gamers or ps3 owners would have to pay for. I see now that it was a stupid assumption. So the dog bit me twice, shame on me.

But that doesn’t mean the dog isn’t a complete ***hole. Microsoft doesn’t have to charge for the content, and I don’t think it’s good business for them to punish me for buying their product.

Also, just because consumers have no backbone doesn’t mean they shouldn’t want one. The failure of a boycott is only evidence that consumers lack conviction, or maybe that some consumers think the content is worth what Valve and Microsoft is charging. Anything is worth what someone is willing to pay for it. But if this pans out well for Microsoft and Valve, and I’m sure it will, 360 owners in particular, and gamers in general, are going to pay for it in the long run.

Marcus, you’re right. I think people just don’t get the concept of a boycott. A business doesn’t care whether a customer is satisfied unless it means he’s not going to buy its product. My problem, in the end, is that they have the gall to say they’re going to boycott when they know very well that they won’t. That’s just plain whiny, and it makes businesses less responsive to complaints in the future.

As for omegabob, I’m going to concede the argument about the relative virtues and drawbacks of consoles vs. pc gaming for fps games and assume here that, even if all the people I want to co-op with use consoles, the pc would still be a superior choice. I’m more concerned with the fact that you have apparently modeled your speech pattern after the jock/bully in an 80′s high school film, with a little 4chan thrown in there just to make it more obnoxious. Remember that part in Spiderman 3 where Peter Parker thought he was acting cool, but was really just some really bizarre rendition of what a nerd thinks is cool? That’s you.

Please tell me you own and have tricked out a Honda Civic and make fun of other people’s cars. I just can’t deal with a whole new breed of guys with too much to prove. It’s like Valve slapping a new face on a character and calling it new content.