Gamasutra is reporting that analysis firm DFC recently held a study from the simultaneous release of Left 4 Dead on Steam and Xbox 360, tracking to see which platform kept the attention of players longer. The two were about neck-and-neck up until Valve held a half-off deal on Steam around February, at which point the numbers playing on PC spiked. The same happened when a free-to-play weekend was held in May, where the numbers reached their highest on PC and continued to dwindle on the Xbox 360. Let's look at this from the perspective of someone that can think things through on their own, though. If you offer a game for half-off, a whole bunch of new players are suddenly going to jump in and play the game a lot. If you offer a free-to-play weekend, even more people are going to jump in and then be convinced that they ought to buy the game. What does the study prove? The less people have to pay, the more that they will play. Not exactly a deep discovery of human nature, here.