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Valve's fake, rigged, waste of time Progress Quest troll Portal 2 ARG

Cipherr

Member
Lol @ the estimated time for release being a few hours after the actual set release date. Epic fail on the final stretch of this ARG man. Epic epic fail.

Edit: Well accounting for the hours that get shaved off maybe a little early, but hardly worth note.
 

Atomski

Member
Zomba13 said:
To 500,000!

lol and when nothing happens 600,000!

Valve could have done something far more interesting to make these past few days not drag on so bad. They should have just kept up the ARG stuff like it was before the timer.
 

Exuro

Member
Cipherr said:
Lol @ the estimated time for release being a few hours after the actual set release date. Epic fail on the final stretch of this ARG man. Epic epic fail.

Edit: Well accounting for the hours that get shaved off maybe a little early, but hardly worth note.
Especially when console players are already playing their copies.
 

Corky

Nine out of ten orphans can't tell the difference.
Lostconfused said:
Well once the other bars fill up maybe another two or thee hours will get shaved off. So maybe around 8 or 9 on tuesday morning.

Ah, well I guess a few hours earlier is better than none at all. Then again I say that as someone who has stood by and abstained from participating in this madness so I guess people who did might've wanted a bigger chunk.
 

epmode

Member
Based on Valve's current estimate, this game will unlock one hour before I have to leave for work on Tuesday. What a ride!
 
SalsaShark said:
ugghhh say epic fail out loud and hear how stupid you sound
God damn amazing avatar dude.

350662-big_boss_salute_super.jpg
 

Mikey Jr.

Member
No, seriously.

What is the point of the potatoes for this phase?

Dont give me this multiplier bullshit cause that is obviously not what it is. If it was 4x like it should be, this thing would be fucking done by now.

Has to be something else.
 

Kuga

Member
epmode said:
Based on Valve's current estimate, this game will unlock one hour before I have to leave for work on Tuesday. What a ride!

And you'll spend that entire hour watching Steam decrypt 10GB worth of files.
 
SalsaShark said:
ugghhh say epic fail out loud and hear how stupid you sound

I know people who say epic fail unironically . They are the worst.

I think the game will unlock by this time tomorrow. They wouldn't do something like this just to to release the game a few hours early. There's either something else that's going to happen or Valve way overestimated their user-base. Hoping for the former, expecting the latter.
 

EVIL

Member
I feel screwed over .. I think I can safely assume most of us feel the same, gotten our hopes up (sure its always a risk but we had some sturdy evidence that this would be the case) to have portal 2 playable in the weekends and valve pulled this? I would have expected them to adjust the requirements by now, but unfortionatly, they really don't want it to be released before the console version, which is a bit stupid since gamestop broke their streetdate. so now we are getting spoiled from all directions by console tards.

There better be some friggin reward for all this effort and toying with us.
 

Hylian7

Member
Mikey Jr. said:
No, seriously.

What is the point of the potatoes for this phase?

Dont give me this multiplier bullshit cause that is obviously not what it is. If it was 4x like it should be, this thing would be fucking done by now.

Has to be something else.
I was asking the same thing. At best it's looking it won't unlock til tomorrow because it doesn't seem like potatoes have done jack shit. Again, what exactly was the point of handling this thing this way?! I would have rather they just didn't do anything and just released Tuesday instead of hyping everyone for a Friday release only to have a countdown to another countdown.
 

Corky

Nine out of ten orphans can't tell the difference.
Hylian7 said:
I was asking the same thing. At best it's looking it won't unlock til tomorrow because it doesn't seem like potatoes have done jack shit. Again, what exactly was the point of handling this thing this way?! I would have rather they just didn't do anything and just released Tuesday instead of hyping everyone for a Friday release only to have a countdown to another countdown.

Well the cynical ( and correct ) answer is that Valve did this in order to increase the sales of not only Portal 2 but also other titles on steam ( of which they obviously take their cut ).
 

Twig

Banned
snoopeasystreet said:
I know people who say epic fail unironically . They are the worst.
I submit that people who say "lawl" unironically are, in fact, the worst. I know someone like that. ):
 
Hylian7 said:
I was asking the same thing. At best it's looking it won't unlock til tomorrow because it doesn't seem like potatoes have done jack shit. Again, what exactly was the point of handling this thing this way?! I would have rather they just didn't do anything and just released Tuesday instead of hyping everyone for a Friday release only to have a countdown to another countdown.
I think you are being overly optimistic here. The game is still coming out on Tuesday. Its just coming out a few hours earlier than it would have normally.
 

Jex

Member
It's like the final stretch of a badly developed game, where they just keep copy-pasting the same environments with a ton of enemies thrown at you that you have to grind though.
 

Red

Member
EVIL said:
I feel screwed over .. I think I can safely assume most of us feel the same, gotten our hopes up (sure its always a risk but we had some sturdy evidence that this would be the case) to have portal 2 playable in the weekends and valve pulled this? I would have expected them to adjust the requirements by now, but unfortionatly, they really don't want it to be released before the console version, which is a bit stupid since gamestop broke their streetdate. so now we are getting spoiled from all directions by console tards.

There better be some friggin reward for all this effort and toying with us.
I don't feel screwed over since we're not losing anything in the process. I feel frustrated and disappointed that Valve chose this as an end to their ARG, since it's so boring and pointless. But they haven't screwed me out of anything. They've just sort of dropped the ball.
 

Corky

Nine out of ten orphans can't tell the difference.
Well regardless of how dissapointed I am with this, you can't argue that Valve hasn't generated more hype/exposure with this marketingstunt. So in that sense they succeeded ( for themselves that is ).
 

megalowho

Member
EVIL said:
they really don't want it to be released before the console version, which is a bit stupid since gamestop broke their streetdate.
I have not been following other Portal 2 threads for fear of spoilers, is this true? Man, what a punch to the gut if so. PC only players really will be the last to get their hands on it despite the ARG, what with midnight launches and all as well.
 

TheExodu5

Banned
I'm just completely amazed that Valve hasn't done anything at all in response to this. It's like they have their fingers in their ears, yelling "nanana buy more games if you want it to come out faster nanana!".
 
Lostconfused said:
I think you are being overly optimistic here. The game is still coming out on Tuesday. Its just coming out a few hours earlier than it would have normally.

The only reason the "normal" time is the middle of the day instead of midnight is so that they can pull this shit. Why would a DD release come out after retail? It's not like they're waiting until 7AM for the guy to come and open the store.
 

epmode

Member
Well I opened a ticket to cancel my Steam pre-order. I'll just go with PS3 instead. A 24-48 hour early release was enough to push me over the edge but that's it.
 

EVIL

Member
Corky said:
Well the cynical ( and correct ) answer is that Valve did this in order to increase the sales of not only Portal 2 but also other titles on steam ( of which they obviously take their cut ).
well, no doubt it did that! I can imagine those developers getting filthy rich from this.

There has to be more to it then that, or else this is just a big fuck you to their fanbase.
 

Corky

Nine out of ten orphans can't tell the difference.
TheExodu5 said:
I'm just completely amazed that Valve hasn't done anything at all in response to this. It's like they have their fingers in their ears, yelling "nanana buy more games if you want it to come out faster nanana!".

Well I guess it would've been something if people actually buying games would result in an earlier release. But a billion purchases wouldn't have made the game come out on friday.
 
God's Beard said:
The only reason the "normal" time is the middle of the day instead of midnight is so that they can pull this shit. Why would a DD release come out after retail? It's not like they're waiting until 7AM for the guy to come and open the store.
If you really want to be cynical about it. Chances are even if all the bars were filled up on Friday the game would still only unlock on Tuesday midnight at the earliest.
 

epmode

Member
Lostconfused said:
If you really want to be cynical about it. Chances are even if all the bars were filled up on Friday the game would still only unlock on Tuesday midnight at the earliest.
Exactly. Even if every one of the 2-3 million Steam users were in Potato Pack games from start of this promotion, we'd still be getting it on Tuesday morning.

The bars would fill instantly but since each is only knocking off 30-60 minutes, it wouldn't amount to much.
 
~Kinggi~ said:
lol so much effort for so little return. God damn.
I'm not playing any potato game because I'm with God's Bear in this. I'm pretty sure the bar is fixed, just a marketing scheme by Valve. I'd rather catch up with my backlog.
 

Twig

Banned
The ARG as a whole was fun, and this whole ordeal is such a minor part of the ARG that there's no reason to complain whatsoever.
 

TheExodu5

Banned
Yeah all the data we've seen so far seems to indicate the whole thing is fixed, to be honest. Even though the users participating has fluctuated in between 14-22k, the rate of progress has been the same the whole time. Potatoes have absolutely no effect either.
 
Twig said:
The ARG as a whole was fun, and this whole ordeal is such a minor part of the ARG that there's no reason to complain whatsoever.
I believe people are complaining more about "Play more games for an early release" but their effort is minimal in regard to the progress of the timer. I didn't see any complain about the ARG before this.

Like I said this thing is fixed, and people getting super frustrated about it aren't going to change a thing.
 

Cipherr

Member
SalsaShark said:
ugghhh say epic fail out loud and hear how stupid you sound

If you have a point to make, make it SalsaShark.

darkpaladinmfc said:
This isn't a minor part, this is the grand conclusion.


Precisely, its the crescendo, and its preeeeeettttttyyy shitty. They put some great stuff together for the ARG but this is just terrible.
 

Kuga

Member
Twig said:
The ARG as a whole was fun, and this whole ordeal is such a minor part of the ARG that there's no reason to complain whatsoever.

As a whole the ARG was nice, but this is probably the worst possible ending that could have happened. No early release would have been better for than this. Valve screwed up the finale at the peak of hype and hope; there is no denying that.
 

Oreoleo

Member
Twig said:
The ARG as a whole was fun, and this whole ordeal is such a minor part of the ARG that there's no reason to complain whatsoever.

I dunno about that. It was basically to the point where you could wake up every day and something new about the ARG would have come out. It was constantly moving and evolving for a week or two. Now we've been grinding games for 2 full days and still seemingly have another day or more to go with nothing else to break up all that time. They effectively took all the wind out of their sails, whether you enjoy playing the Potato Sack games or not.
 
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