Obligatory fuck Thor of PirateSoftware

My childhood game of choice was Left 4 Dead. That had community server abilities long before Valve ‘stopped’ developing the game. This particular solution is very simple and has been implemented hundreds of times. Here is an explanation of how Left 4 Dead 2 server options work, as well as a list of servers, all of which are run on players’ own machines and, save for the choice of mods, have the ability to host multiplayer games exactly like Valve’s official Steam servers do.

Side note - this was only possible on Steam, because consoles had to run through their respective manufacturer’s proprietary systems and made for a much more restrictive and costly upkeep.