14 DAY TRIAL // Valve might have just begun the build up to an announcement for Portal 2 or even for a new Orange Box-like deal involving multiple titles. And it's all happening via the original release of Portal, which has just received a small update via Steam.
The update itself is a new Achievement, named “Transmission Received,” and allows the players who go through the game again to place the radio on the red button in the first stage in order to get some Morse code from it. The patch notes offered by Valve only mention “changed radio transmission frequency to comply with federal and state spectrum management regulations.”
The messages read, “interior transmission active external data line active message digest active;” “9e107d9d372bb6821bd91d3542a419d6,” which is an MD5 hash of “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog;” “system data dump active user backup active password backup active;” “beep beeeep beep beep beeeep beeeep beeeep beep beeeep beep beep” that can also be converted to a succinct “LOL.”
Some of the sounds captured can also be made into images. The pictures that come out are pretty blurry and seem to show another testing facility like the one seen in Portal, although it's difficult to know exactly what can be made out of them. Some Portal and Half Life fans are speculating that Valve is starting an Alternate Reality Game, which will lead up to the announcement of their new videogame project. Some have pointed to March 11 as the possible date of the announcement.
Those who are interested in following the whole decryption process can long into Facepunch or the two threads on the official Steam forums. It's all pretty exciting as long as you are willing to read huge numbers of posts and keep up with appealing theories about Half Life 2: Episode 3, Portal 2 and the potential crossovers between the two games.