History of the creation of Killing Floor

We present to your attention a short excursion to the times when the grass was green, and Killing Floor was still an amateur mod

Origins

Few people know that Killing Floor was originally conceived as a mod for Battlefield 1942. Back then, in 2004, there were only two people on the modding team, work was slow, and the modders were looking for new members. Then they met Alex Quick. He took on most of the work on the mod. However, after some time the team fell apart, and Alex took his content and name with him.

The next time KF reappeared on the mod scene was in August 2004, now as a total conversion for Unreal Tournament 2004. The mod quickly gained popularity, repeatedly won various awards, and was written about by such popular gaming magazines as PC Zone and PC Gamer. By 2008, a small but close-knit and dedicated team of modders of 4 people, led by Alex, released the final version - Killing Floor 2.5, and with this the development of the mod was virtually completed.

I must say that Killing Floor looked different then than it does now. For example, each perk had only one level for pumping, after opening which the player received all the bonuses of the perk. There were relatively few weapons in the mod - a little more than 10 guns for all the perks. The cards only had one magazine and had a darker design. The monsters looked different too. However, at its core, the game was already the same Killing Floor that we know and love.

The mod can still be played today and is available for download from ModDB. To install and run you will need a copy of the latest version of Unreal Tournament 2004.

Full game

Then, in 2008, Tripwire Interactive released the amateur mod “Mare Nostrum” for Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 on Steam, becoming the first company since Valve to release mods for its games on Steam. This is not surprising considering that Tripwire started out as a team of modders themselves.

It was then that Alex realized that KF would also be good to release on Steam. Contacting Tripwire, he offered to transfer his mod to the Red Orchestra base and release it for free on Steam. However, after looking at Killing Floor, Tripwire concluded that it was too good to remain a hobbyist mod. Making a deal with Alex and his team, Tripwire bought the copyright to KF and joined forces with modders to develop KF into a full game and release it on Steam. With the assistance of Valve, Tripwire and the original modding team of Alex, Miles, Marco (who released several popular mods for the game after release, such as Server Perks) and musician Zynthetic, who wrote the cool metal soundtrack, put in a huge effort and brought the game to mind.

In the spring of 2009, Killing Floor was announced by gaming portals IGN and Voodoo Extreme and on the pages of PC Gamer UK magazine. Killing Floor was released on May 14th on Steam. Player feedback for the game has been great. But the release didn’t end there! The developers still release free updates with new content: maps, weapons, new monsters, as well as paid character sets.