Portal 2 Arrives a Few Hours Earlier than Expected

The Alternate Reality Game set up by Valve for the release of Portal 2 is currently seeing users of its Steam digital download service working together to get the title released just a few hours earlier than expected.

Portal 2 is set to be one of the biggest releases of the year, with Valve pulling out all the stops to generate hype around it.

We revealed last week that the company launched an interesting sale on its Steam service, under the name "The Potato Sack," which included 13 independent games like Amnesia: The Dark Descent or Defense Grid: The Awakening, all with exclusive Portal-themed levels.

Clues were hidden inside the special levels, which were part of an alternate reality game (ARG), that required players to work together and uncover the reward.

A website address was found, which pointed to a countdown timer that expired on Friday.

Many believed that Valve would reward its loyal fans with an early release of Portal 2, launching the title before the start of the weekend.

Sadly, that wasn't so, as Valve announced that, after purchasing and going through the indie games in the Potato Sack, gamers must now play through them in order to "generate enough power to reboot GLaDOS," the evil artificial intelligence from the first Portal game.

That wouldn't have been so bad, but the requirements for the reboot were pretty steep, as tens of thousands of gamers needed to play each of the 13 titles in order to accelerate the reboot process.

As of right now, after all their hard work, around 24 hours separate us from the release of Portal 2, while the official release is set to take place in around 30 hours.

Six games still need to be completed by the players, but, judging that 7 of them were already completed, it will only shave a couple of more hours from the projected release timer.

As you can imagine, some gamers were a bit disappointed with Valve, but you shouldn't forget that The Potato Sack sold a huge amount of copies, thus benefiting 13 indie games, so the whole ARG did raise some serious awareness for lots of independent developers.

What did you think of the whole Portal 2 release campaign? Share your impressions below.