How to Install Left 4 Dead 2 and Join a Server

Left 4 Dead 2 is a co-operative shooter about four people trying to walk from one end of a level to the other while the game actively conspires against them. It came out in 2009 and there are still 436 servers listed here.

Installing it is trivial. The part worth explaining is that this game has two completely separate ways of finding other players, they behave very differently, and the one the menu pushes you towards is not the one the community uses.

What you need

• A Steam account
• Left 4 Dead 2, a paid game, frequently heavily discounted
• Around 15 GB free

Our Steam guide deals with signing up, if you have managed to avoid it until now.

Note that this is the second game. Left 4 Dead, the 2008 original, is a separate purchase with its own smaller server population. The sequel absorbed most of the first game's campaigns as free downloadable content, so there is little reason to start with the original unless you specifically want its community.

Step 1: install

Buy it, install it from your Library. Files land in steamapps/common/Left 4 Dead 2, and the folder that matters is left4dead2 inside it.

Launch once, let the first-run setup complete, then quit and come back. The game builds shader caches on first launch and the first few minutes are not representative of how it runs.

Step 2: enable the console

Options, then Keyboard and Mouse, then Allow Developer Console. Or add -console to the launch options via the game's Properties in Steam.

You cannot join a specific server without it.

Step 3: understand the two ways to play

This is the part the menu obscures.

Official matchmaking is what the front menu offers. Pick a campaign and a difficulty, and the game finds three other players and puts you on a Valve-provided server. It is convenient, and it is the whole reason a lot of people think this game is dead — the queue is thinner than it used to be, and it drops you into partly finished campaigns with people who leave.

Dedicated community servers are individual machines running custom configurations. They are where the game's actual population lives, and they are almost invisible from the main menu.

The difference is not subtle. Community servers routinely run:

• More than four survivors. Eight-player and ten-player co-op is common, and it changes the game completely.
• Custom campaigns. Hundreds of community-made campaigns exist, and dedicated servers are where you play them with other people rather than with bots.
• Modified difficulty and special infected rules. Servers that make Expert look gentle, and servers that are far more forgiving than Normal.
• Versus and Survival as their permanent mode, rather than as a queue you wait in.

Step 4: find a server

The in-game browser is under Play, then the option to browse dedicated servers. It works and it sorts badly.

Our Left 4 Dead 2 list queries every listing directly every fifteen minutes, so player counts are measured, and each entry carries a copyable address.

Worth checking what mode a server is running before you join. A Versus server and a co-op server want different things from you, and turning up to a competitive Versus lobby having never played the game is a poor first evening for everybody.

Step 5: connect

Open the console:

connect 216.52.148.47:27015

Copy the port along with the address. 27015 is the default, and hosts running several servers on one machine cannot all use it.

First join downloads content

Servers running custom campaigns push those campaigns to you. A large custom campaign is a substantial download — considerably more than a Counter-Strike map — and on a server without a fast download host this takes a while.

It happens once per campaign. After that the files are cached locally in left4dead2/addons or left4dead2/download.

The Director, and why every run is different

Worth knowing before you decide the game is unfair.

Left 4 Dead 2 does not place its zombies in advance. A system usually called the Director watches how the group is doing and decides what to send at you, when to make things quiet, and where to put the medkits. A run that goes well gets harder. A group that is struggling gets a breather and more supplies.

This is why the same level is different every time and why "we did this yesterday and it was easier" is always true and never means anything went wrong.

It also means the game is genuinely built around four people communicating. Playing it silently with strangers is playing a much worse game than the one that was designed.

The special infected, and why you cannot play this alone

The ordinary zombies are not the threat. The specials are, and every one of them is designed so that the person caught cannot escape without help. This is the game's central mechanic and it is why a silent group of strangers loses to a talkative group of beginners.

Smoker pulls you in with a tongue from a long way off and chokes you. You cannot break free. Someone else has to shoot the tongue or the Smoker.

Hunter leaps on you and pins you to the floor. You cannot get up. Someone else has to knock him off.

Boomer vomits on you, which blinds you and attracts a horde directly to your position. Killing one at close range covers everyone nearby, so shoot it early or shove it away first.

Charger grabs one survivor, carries them away from the group, and beats them against the ground. Again, only someone else can stop it.

Spitter leaves a pool of acid, which does not immobilise you but makes standing still lethal. Its real purpose is to make a spot where somebody is pinned impossible to rescue them from.

Jockey rides you and steers you — usually off a ledge, or into the rest of the specials.

Witch is stationary and ignores you until startled by a light, a noise, or gunfire. Startled, she kills whoever did it almost instantly. Turn your torch off and walk around her.

Tank is a wall of muscle that throws concrete. Nothing about it is subtle and nothing except sustained fire from everybody stops it.

Notice the pattern: five of the eight leave you completely helpless until a teammate acts. That is not a difficulty setting. It is the design.

The chat commands most servers understand

Populated dedicated servers usually run SourceMod. Typed in normal chat:

• !rtv — vote to change campaign.
• !nominate — put a campaign on the vote.
• !motd — the server's rules page.
• !admin — page a moderator.

Some servers add their own menus for switching teams, voting on difficulty, or picking a character. !menu is a common way in.

What to carry

You have five slots and the choices matter more than the guns do.

A primary weapon — rifle, shotgun, sniper. Take whatever suits the map; shotguns for tight interiors, rifles for anything with distance.

A secondary, which is either a pistol or a melee weapon. The pistol has infinite ammo and matters when your primary runs dry mid-horde. Melee weapons kill ordinary infected in one swing and never run out. Most people carry melee and regret it exactly once.

A throwable. The pipe bomb is the most useful item in the game for a new player: it beeps, flashes, and the entire horde runs to it instead of you. Molotovs block a corridor with fire. Bile bombs make ordinary infected attack whatever you threw it at, including a Tank.

Health — a medkit, which heals properly, or a defibrillator, which brings back a dead teammate. Carrying a defib is a statement that you expect things to go badly.

Pills or adrenaline, which are temporary. Pills give you buffer health that drains away. Adrenaline makes you fast and lets you use items quickly, which is how you revive somebody while a Tank is coming.

Give your medkit away if someone is worse off. This sounds sentimental and is straightforwardly correct: a dead teammate is a quarter of the group's firepower gone, and there is no scoreboard rewarding you for finishing with supplies.

Problems you will actually hit

Stuck at "Waiting for server". Usually a full server or one mid-map-change. Give it thirty seconds, then try another.

Missing textures or a black screen on a custom campaign. The download did not complete. Disconnect, reconnect, and let it finish.

Your addons conflict. Workshop addons that replace models or sounds can break on servers running their own versions. The Addons menu lets you disable them individually without unsubscribing.

Everyone else is a bot. You joined an empty server. The game fills the four survivor slots with AI regardless, which makes an empty server look occupied from inside. Check the listing for the real count before joining.

The game runs badly despite the age. Turn off multicore rendering if you are on a modern CPU and seeing stutter. It is a 2009 setting and it does not always age well.

Settings that persist

left4dead2/cfg/autoexec.cfg runs at startup and survives updates. config.cfg is rewritten when the game exits, so edits there are lost.

Where to go next

The full guide to Left 4 Dead 2 servers covers what makes a community server worth staying on, and how the larger-than-four setups actually play.

The original Left 4 Dead still has its own servers, and its campaigns feel meaningfully different from the sequel's despite being playable inside it.

If the Source engine community server culture is what appeals rather than the zombies specifically, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Source and Garry's Mod all work the same way, use the same console, and have far larger populations.

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JoinGG is a live directory of community game servers. Every listing is queried directly every fifteen minutes, so the player count you see was measured rather than reported by its owner, and each one carries a copyable connect address. Left 4 Dead 2 servers are listed here, and every game on the site has its own hub. Player counts across every game are on the statistics page, and Left 4 Dead 2's own numbers — servers online, players now, activity by hour — are on its statistics page.