Valve has announced that upcoming Left 4 Dead 2 DLC The Passing will arrive sometime next week.

If you look at the screen released behind Nick with a driver you can see a red-coated figure, what appears to be Zoey from L4D, above and in the distance.

The Xbox 360 version of the DLC is presumed to release alongside the PC version next week matching past releases with the series.

If you want even more speculation I'd take an educated guess of either Tuesday April 20 or Thursday April 22 as the landing date.

From Steam's community annoucnements:

"When is "The Passing" coming out? Well... if it was coming out next week we would say right here -

Left 4 Dead 2's The Passing is coming out next week and we will be updating the blog next week with more news on the release. There you go."

January 22, 2010 - L4D Team

With our last update having come out a few weeks ago and the next one a few weeks out, we wanted to let people know what we are working on. In addition to "The Passing" DLC, we are working on some other updates coming for both PC and 360. While not a complete list by any means, we wanted to give a heads up on a few Versus changes coming.

Bots

We are adding bots for the Infected team to help out the Infected when they are down a man or two. This will also make 1v1 Versus a bit more fun.

Auto-spawning

We've also been experimenting with a solution for auto-spawning in Versus finales. Even though it's pretty obvious from the L4D forums that EVERYONE LOVES auto-spawning in finales, we figured, what the hell-we'd just go ahead and remove auto-spawning anyway. But before we make any change to Versus we always need to see how the game is currently being played.

So how do finales currently play out? Across all finales in Left 4 Dead 2 currently, a single survivor has a 34.56% chance of escaping. That includes the Concert Finale in "Dark Carnival", which boasts close to a 50% escape rate (and yes, a fix for everyone's favorite cheese spot is coming). Remove the Concert Finale, and we see the average drop to 29.61%. With these figures in mind, when we make changes, we can measure the difference and see how much the change impacted the balance.

Another stat we often see discussed: What gets played more, Versus or Campaign? It really depends on the day, as they are almost always statistically tied. They are unquestionably the two favorite modes of Left 4 Dead.

Also: With work on "The Passing" in full swing, we will soon be recording the actors. First up in our recording sessions is everybody's favorite suit-wearing zombie killer Nick, played by Hugh Dillon. If you haven't already caught it, Hugh's show Durham County has been picked up by ION and is on Sunday nights at 10pm.

January 12, 2010, 2:35 pm - Valve - Product Update

Updates to Left 4 Dead 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Gameplay

• Fixed where last round of upgraded ammo didn't have upgrade effect
• Jockeyed survivor now glows for infected team in all cases
• Fixed exploit that allowed Jockey players to get instant recharge of their ability
• Fixed Charger ability timer not resetting when killing a survivor with low health on their third strike
• Charger now applies a small amount of damage when charging through physic props

Match Making

• Changed how requests are made to master server for group servers
• Fixed sorting on group servers UI
• Reduced update work on group servers UI

Miscellaneous

• Made the water shader support splitscreen on the PC
• Miscellaneous fixes in the subtitles
• Updated system tray icon
• Fixed Survival timer issue caused when voting for round restart

SDK/L4D2-LD/Hammer changes

• When browsing for a func_instance filename, the proper path relative to the current bsp will be returned. This allows level designers to use instances from the base game in dlc maps without having to manually fix up the filename
• Changed base.fgd default skybox to one that exists in L4D2
• Added env_instructor_hint to fgd, as well as content/game icon images
• Deadline URL fix
• Added missing vmt for env_instructor_hint
• L4D Addon Support - restored missing delivery van modified VMT
• L4D Addon Support - restored missing shelves metal 3
• L4D Addon Support - restored floodlight generator switch
• L4D Addon Support - restored missing airliner content
• Updated vbsp to correctly handle instances within instances
• Fixed the fullscreen engine changing the Hammer views, requiring a restart of Hammer

August 4, 2009, 10:08 am - Valve - Press Release

Crash Course Campaign Due in September

August 4, 2009 - Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Half-Life, Portal, Team Fortress, and Counter-Strike) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced the next major downloadable content (DLC) update for its co-operative zombie thriller, Left 4 Dead (L4D), the #1 new game title on Xbox 360 and PC in 2008

Entitled "Crash Course," the latest DLC delivers new single-player, multiplayer and co-operative gameplay to both platforms. Targeted for release in September, "Crash Course" bridges the gap between the end of the "No Mercy" campaign and the beginning of "Death Toll" in the original game, expanding the game universe with new locations, new dialogue from the original cast, and an explosive finale