http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/09/11/the-boycott-joes-l4d-map-campaign/
how can you not love Valve?
I donated 10 bucks just for the lulz :)

I'm sure many people here will say this one word: Steam.

I think the main problem is that Valve have always been about creating mod & expansion-friendly games. With Left 4 Dead they dropped the ball big time and created something that was a complete bastard to create content for.
That's not helped by the skimpy selection of content released with the full price game. We thought it was going to be expanded on. Instead its name became ironic.
As for the fund: apparently he's reached the $400 mark already. Now we've got to keep our eyes peeled and see if this actually happens.

Although Im not ready to part with 10 bucks ( after all, I could be at least 1 gog game ) for it, I sure do find it funny. Would be really interesting to see if they go through with it if he does raise the cash.
I actually found it even more hilarous with the one comment from the donation page that is supposedly ( as we can't really know, but for humour sake, lets do ) from Robin Walker from Valve asking if he donated more if it would only be a one way ticket for Erik :D

but the thing is that they said they will not drop L4D and that was the whole point of inviting Boycott dudes to Valve.
People are used to valve giving more and more for the buck. They do not do as much and people start to accuse them of some criminal activity. And that is quite retarded. If EA did what valve did with L4D people would scream that EA is awesome and it is changing its ways and is finally a carrying company.
and that's just silly.

I have no real opinion or interest in the L4D franchise/campaigns/whatnot, but the idea of a fund to fly Gabe.N and Erik.J here is somewhat amusing.

Well, EA have released no end of new content for Battlefield 2 and have even removed all copy protection from the game. Furthermore, they've made all expansion material freely available as a part of the latest patch.
Compare that to L4D and the thus far limited content it has received and the comparison is almost as stark as it is with their own Team Fortress 2.
According to Steam's own charts TF2 doesn't sell as well as L4D and it costs half as much. Yet it receives a constant flood of never ending updates while L4D has received... what now? Bug fixes a single new map, only playable in one mode and a new game mode that effectively just removes the safe rooms. Even COD4 has been better supported than that, and that's saying something.
So it's understandable that people feel the game has been abandoned. Especially when they go and make its first major free DLC a whole new full price entirely separate game. Now they've divided the community with two full price games and put a lot of others off entirely. That's a really bad move on their part from every possible perspective.
If Valve had simply slapped a price tag on the DLC rather than demanding full price for it as a whole new game, I think that people would have been a lot less pissed off. Valve have just handled the situation very badly.

No arguments there. People are taking it all far too seriously. Valve have made some bad decisions regarding the series and (as a result of their decision to create L4D2 out of L4D DLC) their balancing of support of their multiplayer games.
But the reaction is ludicrously out of proportion to the problem, to put it mildly. It makes you wonder if these people have anything better to do at all.