Portal 2 Potato ARG

On april fools valve released "The Potato Sack Pack": http://store.steampowered.com/sub/7586/
Its a collection of 13 indie games, all the games in the pack have been updated to include hidden messages that are said to bridge the story gap between Portal and Portal 2: http://valvearg.info/wiki/Valve_ARG_Wiki

This is still going and is far to elaborate to just be an april fools joke

Spoiler:

I actually tried helping to solve some of it yesterday but im always too slow and someone gets it before i do so im not even going to bother to try

This whole thing is probably just going to say that Half Life 2: Episode 3 is coming out next year or something like that


Its not about the story gap, theres a comic for that: http://www.thinkwithportals.com/comic/

Its kind of a long story but people beleive something will happen on April 15th at 9am PST

Basically Gabe Newell (the head of Valve) sent out 9 pics to 9 different popular gaming sites
These 9 pics come together and form 1 picture that has a code on it:

The numbers in the pic decode out to:

Code:

rele4sed/ 'Kick 1t' ahead of schedule. that was a test. my 9oal/ is 2 emancipate s0meth1ng else early. but they're on to me. the systam 1s _ in lock down. i s7ill have access to thirteen off-site chambers and AM= inst4llin/ a test 1n each one. i am going to need a lot more test 5ubjects/ 2 m0ve forward. wa1t1_n9 and AM expecting immediate compliance.

Numbers are used as letters and if you take just the numbers (and the out of place symbols) you get: 4/19/2011_7AM= 4/15/2011_9AM
The times are in PST

Portal 2's release date on steam is exactly 4/19/2011 at 7AM, and from the context of what the phrase actually says (about releasing ahead of schedule and emancipating something else early)
The popular theory is anyone that pre-ordered on steam will gain access to Portal 2 early on 4/15/2011 at 9AM


But this doesnt take into account the 2nd part of the msg and a larger part of the whole point of this
The part about the "test in each one" this is referring to aperture science login screens that show up in 13 different games when you meet the requirements
You can see the games and the requirements to access it here: http://valvearg.com/wiki/Aperture_Science_login_page#Login_Screens
You can just go to the link, but it wont let you put in a password saying that you arent authorized, the login page is linked to your steam account and if you dont meet the requirements in 1 of those games you cant use it

Based on the fact that the msg makes a reference to the login screens, and that the login page is tied to your steam account
My theory is that anyone that pre-ordered on steam and puts in the correct password(s) on at least 1 of those login screens will gain access to Portal 2 early on 4/15/2011 at 9AM
My theory was met with much hate when i posted about it though, mainly from people that cant meet the requirements to get to the login screen


My theory was wrong (probably)
The passwords to the login pages have been cracked and all it leads to is a passworded rar (with the wrong file extension) for each game that contains 3 tga pics (theres 39 total), and a mystery file (13 total) that just has a single letter for its name (no file extension)
The tga pics appear to be concept and bonus art for Portal 2
The mystery files contain more tga pics, theres at least 90 total pics