{"id":654,"date":"2011-04-15T12:18:19","date_gmt":"2011-04-15T19:18:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/?p=654"},"modified":"2011-04-15T12:18:19","modified_gmt":"2011-04-15T19:18:19","slug":"portal-2-early","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/?p=654","title":{"rendered":"Portal 2 Early?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

IF I HADN’T PERSONALLY VISITED Valve’s offices on several occasions, I might begin to wonder if they were based out of a subterranean evil lair off the coast of Seattle. Valve doesn’t so much make games any more as they toy with their fanbase, teasing them with rewards like Team Fortress 2<\/em> hats the way you would dangle a toy mouse in front of a cat.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Valve’s latest ploy surrounds the upcoming launch of <\/span>Portal 2<\/em><\/span>, which <\/span>may<\/em><\/span> come a little sooner than the expected April 19 release date. This page<\/a><\/span> yesterday had a countdown timer leading to \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 well, no one knew. At 9AM PST this morning, the page flipped to the following teaser text from GlaDOS, before redirecting to a page listing the 13 indie games that make up \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Potato Sack\u00e2\u20ac\u009d package available for download on Steam: <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

With a new \u00e2\u20ac\u0153projected launch\u00e2\u20ac\u009d timer sitting around 91 hours as of this writing, the game Valve seems to be playing is: the more people play the games in the Potato Sack package, the faster GlaDOS will \u00e2\u20ac\u0153reboot\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and the sooner <\/span>Portal 2<\/em><\/span> will go live. Which, honestly, is simultaneously brilliant and evil. It’s the kind of thing that taps into the OCD gamer mentality, where you <\/span>know <\/em><\/span>people will be up all weekend trying to make the needle move faster, <\/span>and makes Valve look heroes to the indie game community for tying this group in with the launch of such a major title. Oh, and if the community succeeds in taking the gate off early, it means more sales for Valve via Steam instead of selling at retail. Like I said, brilliant and evil.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Will it work? Will the community succeed in getting <\/span>Portal 2<\/em><\/span> released a day or two early, or is this just more teasing from Valve? Either way, you know the folks at Valve are watching with much interest, and maybe twirling a mustache or two. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

IF I HADN’T PERSONALLY VISITED Valve’s offices on several occasions, I might begin to wonder if they were based out of a subterranean evil lair off the coast of Seattle. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,27,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-commentary","category-news","category-pc-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=654"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":663,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions\/663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bytica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}