Since revealing Left 4 Dead 2 at E3, Valve has been at the center of a lot of buzz and controversy. And much of both have come from Valve's plans for the original title, which they had pledged to support, once the new game comes out.

One item of note that they had touched on previously was allowing the two games to be able to interact with one-another, and today has seen a bit of elaboration on what sort of features we can expect to see in that regard.

"For modders, everything they make in Left 4 Dead will work in Left 4 Dead 2," project lead Chet Faliszek told Kikizo recently. "It'll work better if they bring it into Left 4 Dead 2 and recompile it for Left 4 Dead 2, using some of the additions we've made, but it'll work out of the box as well. We just want to make sure that anyone who's making a mod now knows that their time's going to be well spent."

Chet also made mention of further plans to tie the two titles together, though nothing seems to be set in stone just yet: "We need to have some way that those fans who buy the new game and own the old game, or want to pick up the old the game... We've talked about some kind of way for all of that to work. We don't have anything concrete yet that we can say. But definitely we've thought about community and we've thought about those worlds."

And even though there have been numerous threats from fans of the original to "boycott" the sequel, it seems that the modding community itself has lent an overwhelmingly positive response to what Valve is doing with the sequel.

"We've talked with a lot of those guys. That's one of those things - seeing people saying that modders are having a reaction against it, and having just traded 10 emails with these guys and I know their reaction to it, we've talked about it, and they're OK with it. They understand. So that's kind of disingenuous."

Meanwhile, Total Video Games received word from Valve's VP of Marketing, Doug Lombardi, that the group is even trying to go so far as to allow players of the first game to be able to play alongside players of the second, which was one of the "demands" issued by the aforementioned boycotting group, whose membership is presently on the fringe of 38,000.

"That's something that we're trying to work out the details of right now," Lombardi said of the cross-game play feature. "So nothing specific to say today, but we understand that it's a very valid thing to be working on and looking at."

Of course, no matter what they do, someone is going to be unhappy. This is a fact of life that Valve seems ready to accept as they move forward with their plans.

"I once joked that we could put $20 in a box and charge $10 for it, and someone's going to complain," Faliszek said to VideoGamer.com. "And that's just fine - that's just the way it is."

"We never thought, 'We need to say that we're going to keep updating Left 4 Dead,' because that was always our plan," he says when asked about the possibility of doing anything to avoid the negative reactions. "Briefly before that [E3] we'd already posted on our blog about the updates that were coming. We didn't think people would think, 'Oh wait, now they're not going to do that stuff they talked about'. Yes, we are."

Faliszek wonders if perhaps they could have been more clear at E3 in their commitment to the original title, but figures that the complaints were likely inevitable. Nonetheless, he reasserts that Valve has "no plans" to cut support of the original game.