Valve has just released another patch for Left 4 Dead on the PC today, and all of the people who spammed melee through the levels have been yelling about it since the moment it hit.  The reason for this is because now after a few repeat swings there is a cool down period.  Yes, just like in real life, when you swing your rifle a few times you get a little tired.  And yes Xbox 360 players, you will be getting this patch with the free DLC coming out in just under a month.

Hit the jump to read what Valve has to say about the new update and the rest of the fixes.

We recently updated the PC version of Left 4 Dead with some exploit fixes and Versus balancing. We are going to be releasing another small update later today that contains some server issue fixes and one small, but very large, gameplay adjustment. We have made a change to the melee mechanic in Versus and the soon-to-be-released Survival Mode.

Xbox 360 users will see these same gameplay changes in an update coming out with the DLC — which, in case you missed the announcement, will be coming out April 21st.

As we continue to work on Left 4 Dead, our plan is to release more frequently on the PC, and then group those updates for the 360.

With the upcoming release of the SDK, and the community servers already available on the PC, matchmaking is one place where the two platforms will diverge. A future blog post will detail our roadmap for PC matchmaking.

We also use direct feedback from players themselves. One of the questions people ask is if we read the forums: the answer is yes. So please post your feedback on the melee and other changes as we make them. We promise to keep listening to your feedback, making changes and improving the gameplay experience of Left 4 Dead. Remember: If you don't see an issue addressed with this update, that doesn't mean it isn't coming.

Game and client changes

    * Introduced fatigue to the melee attack in versus mode. You will see a HUD display when your melee swing is cooling down

    * Boomer vomit will now pass through common infected

    * Addressed some surround sound detection issues

    * Fixed a rare crash when exiting Left4Dead on Windows Vista

    * Fixed a case where the complete all expert campaigns achievement was not being rewarded

Dedicated server changes

    * Corrected an issue where Windows based dedicated were sending spurious shutdown notifications to the master causing them to delist temporarily

    * Fixed dedicated servers not resetting the versus team swap correctly--you could join a dedicated server that had a previous game that was swapped and arrive on the other team than what was selected in the lobby

    * Renamed the tags for sv_search_key to use "key:" in the server tags instead of "sv_search_key." This should help with issues of the 63 character limit of server tags

    * Fixed an occasional server crash related to voting

I can't wait for this patch to hit the 360. I hate players who do nothing but spam their melee attack. It's sad that people swing their weapons more often than shoot them, and I'm glad it is going to be fixed.