Portal 2 will be released early if you play enough indie games

Posted April 15, 2011 by Lewis Denby in News.

That’s it, then. The Valve ARG. Portal 2 might be released early… but only if you play a bunch of indie games.

“Help release Portal 2 early,” now reads the website. “Play all 13 games in The Potato Sack to reboot GLaDOS.”

The Potato Sack, in case you’re not aware, is a collection of 13 indie games for the tiny price of £27.50. The collection has been going increasingly Portal-themed all week. But it’s only that price until the minute Portal 2 comes out.

For your money you get acclaimed titles such as Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Super Meat Boy.

It is, for my money, an exceptionally smart move by Valve, which is sure to generate an absolute bloody load of cash for all the devs involved – as well as Valve themselves, of course.

I also find myself loving it because of how much attention these indie titles are going to get as a result of this. Being featured clearly on Steam does wonders for indies’ sales, demonstrably. The likes of this could be huge.

The way it works seems to be this:

In order for Portal 2 to unlock early, a huge number of people need to be simultaneously playing these 13 games.

How many people exactly varies from game to game. Some look like they’ll be in the low thousands, others probably pushing into the hundreds of thousands.

The Wonderful End of the World only has 71 players as I write, but its progress bar is higher than any other.

Meanwhile, Killing Floor is being played by over 2,600 people, but the progress bar’s barely off baseline.

So, there we have it. Will the gaming community buy this? Is it a wonderful idea to promote indie games? Or is it an evil money-grabbing scheme? What are your thoughts? The comments thread beckons…

Tagged as ARG, Portal 2, Valve, Valve ARG