Portal 2 May Be Launched Today

Portal 2, Valve's upcoming first person puzzle platformer, may be launched later today, as the company's Augmented Reality Game is nearing to a close at 9am PST.

Portal 2 has been in development for quite some time, being delayed by Valve so that it can polish it up and deliver one of the best experiences in the history of the company.

As with any Valve title, the company has been increasing the hype around it through a variety of ways, from hilarious commercials for the game's unique equipment, to all sorts of guerrilla marketing efforts.

The biggest part of the hype campaign is the Potato Sack offer, currently available on Steam, which sees Valve partner with a 13 indie developers and offer massive discounts for their games.

That's not all, however, as each game has received brand new levels centered around Portal 2 and filled with clues for a special kind of augmented reality game.

Valve did a similar thing before officially announcing Portal 2, as it released an update for the first game which contained coded messages that were quickly solved by the dedicated fans of the franchise.

Now, the community has once again answered Valve's call, and has been trying to find out what's behind the new clues.

The end result of their search is an address for the Aperture Science website, the company that appears in Portal 2, which is hosting a special countdown clock as well as a message, presumably from GLaDOS, the evil artificial intelligence from the original Portal.

"You have done well, humans," reads the message. "Very well. Acceptably well, even. Not as well as robots would have performed in your places, I should point out. But above my expectations regardless. […] The time is near, humans. But it is not here yet. Tomorrow you will be given the final test. Then it will be entirely in your hands when I am freed."

This countdown, coupled with several other rumors found on the web, might hint at an early release of Portal 2, later today, at 9am PST, which is the time zone of Seattle, where Valve is based.

Portal 2 is scheduled to be released next week, on April 19, but Valve wouldn't have lots of problems releasing it first through its Steam digital distribution service on the PC or Mac.

As you can imagine, Valve isn't commenting on the issue, so we need to wait until later today to see if Portal 2 arrives early.