After the announcement of Left 4 Dead 2 at Microsoft’s E3 press conference this year, a cry of foul (or a foul cry) went up amid the original Left 4 Dead community, voicing their concerns over developer Valve’s decision to release the next entry to the series so soon, and without adding a variety of promised add-on content to the first game.

Another problem that the Left 4 Dead community brought up was that they believed that Left 4 Dead 2 didn’t add enough to warrant a full-price retail product, instead thinking it would be best for the new content to be released by way of a downloadable, digital release, or at a reduced price at retail.

Naturally, for an internet-based community, an online petition group soon went up imploring Valve to rethink the situation, going on to amass a 40 000-strong list of followers who pledged to boycott the release of Left 4 Dead 2 unless their worries were assuaged.

Valve didn’t budge.

After months of a stand-off between the boycotters and Valve, and after the release of new, free downloadable content (DLC) for the PC version of Left 4 Dead, as well as many reveals to show that Left 4 Dead 2 is anything but a glorified expansion pack, the petition holders have decided to end the boycott, officially as of October 21st 12:00 PM Eastern Standard Time.

From the announcement post, regarding the decision to end the boycott:

“We have accomplished everything we can on our manifesto. We’ve been dealing with Valve ever since our group started, then we met them in-person and now we’re at the point of concluding our discussions.

“Our goal wasn’t to steer people away from L4D2, it was to get Valve’s attention and have them support original L4D. We succeeded and that’s where our mission ends; nothing more or less.”