Left 4 Dead 2 ships with several ways to play the same campaigns. The mode decides whether you're teaming up against the AI Director or fighting other players, and it changes which maps make sense. Here's what each one is and how to switch on your server.
The modes
- Co-op: The classic four-survivor campaign against the AI Director. Play a full campaign start to finish. This is the default and what most people want.
- Realism: Co-op with the training wheels off: no glowing outlines on teammates or items, Witches one-shot on higher difficulty, and rescue closets don't bring dead players back. Same campaigns, much tenser.
- Versus: Two teams take turns playing the survivors and the special infected over the same map, and score is compared. The competitive mode. On our servers it works even with uneven teams: bots fill the empty seats on both sides, so a 2v2 still plays as a full 4v4. On our servers the round waits until every player has typed
!ready. - Survival: Hold a fixed arena against endless waves and beat your best time. Uses dedicated survival maps rather than full campaigns.
- Scavenge: A short, round-based versus variant where survivors race to pour gas cans into a generator while the infected try to stop the clock.
Switching modes on your server
- Pick the mode at deploy, or switch live from the web console on your server card (mode, campaign, chapter, difficulty, bots). Applies on the next map load, which the console handles.
- On a Community (Steam lobby) server, the lobby picks the mode when it claims the server. Your deploy pick still matters: it decides which mods install, so deploy with the mode you plan to host.
- Every full campaign supports Co-op, Realism and Versus. Survival and Scavenge play on single chapters rather than full campaigns; use the console's chapter list to pick one.