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We knew that there would be free DLC for Portal 2. It was just a matter of time before it would be announced. Today Valve announced that its puzzle-shooter sequel would officially get its first free DLC pack this summer. The pack will be free for all of its platforms (PC, Mac, PS3 and Xbox 360).

The pack itself will contain "new test chambers for players, leaderboards, challenge mode for single and multiplayer modes, and more." Of course the free DLC pack with the promise of more to come just makes Portal 2 a bigger bargain than it already is.

[Via email press release]

It's almost a no-brainer that Valve would be providing post-release downloadable content for Portal 2. The developer has always been good about releasing new (and free for PC owners) content for its games over the year. However it's always good to get the official word that new stuff for the puzzle shooter sequel is on its way in the near future,

At the end of a (spoiler filled) interview with Valve team members on the Fast Company web site, Valve's marketing head Doug Lombardi states, "We will be announcing some DLC for it, so folks can keep a look out for more content coming this summer. We'll be putting more details out about that in a week or so. We'll support that with more videos or more comics." Hopefully we will see stuff that was cut from Portal 2 that was shown in the game before its release such as the Pneumatic Tubes.

Few games resonate with players as much as the original Portal, released in 2007. The sequel takes what started as a short and relatively experimental concept and kicks it up several notches to a fully fleshed out game that tops its predecessor. Portal 2 expands the gameplay in just about every respect with more characters, a longer storyline, and additional new experimental technologies added to the large scale portal themed puzzles. The puzzles are much bigger and have more moving parts, but they're generally as easy to figure out as those from the first game, although one or two have some pretty tricky solutions.

Check out all Portal 2 downloads

As good as Portal 2 turned out there were some elements of Valve's puzzle-shooter that didn't make the final game. One of them was the pneumatic tubes that were shown in early preview videos of Valve's game.

In a new interview on Electronic Arts' UK web site Valve's head writer Erik Wolpaw reveals that one of the game's new gel effects was also removed from the final version of Portal 2. He says, "At one point we had a new Gel that allowed players to walk up the side of walls." While the prospect of playing Spider-Man sounds fun, Wolpaw confirms that the gel was not put into the final game because, " ... the effect was so disorientating that it made people (nauseous)."

Of all of the games that were involved in the Portal 2 ARG promotion, the one that most resembled Valve's puzzle shooter series is The Ball from developer Teotl Studios. This weekend The Ball dev team posted up its own behind-the-scenes account on making the original Portal 2 content that was put into its own puzzle-shooter.

After putting in a couple of obscure content items in the game, the big new addition is a new challenge level where players navigate the Ball through a series of Portal-related test chambers. The level took about a month to complete. The article also gives clues to some hidden items in the game's terminal screens.

With the Portal 2 ARG event now completed, some of the Potato Sack indie game developers involved in the unique marketing event for Valve's puzzle-shooter are taking about their involvement. Two Tribes, who had two games in the the ARG (Toki Tori and RUSH) posted up an article on their web site that talks about putting the Portal 2 themed content into their games over the length of the ARG.

Othe developers like Gaijin Games (Bit.Trip Beat) and Hidden Path Entertainment (Defense Grid The Awakening) also talk about their work on the ARG which started out with Valve inviting all the developers last December to work on the project. The result was a ton of extra free content for all 13 games (levels, puzzles, and more). Much of it will remain in the game after the ARG is finished.

So no Portal 2 DLC yet but knowing Valve we will be getting regular content updates for this game for a long time.

• Steam has new automatic updates for Post Apocalyptic Mayhem, Left 4 Dead 2 (with the repeat of the Survival Versus mutation gameplay mode, Dino D-Day and Portal 2.
• A newly added trademark may be the name for the next Hitman game.
• Who is the bald guy that is pictured in one of Valve's intro movies? Reddit has the answer.
• In the "This is a real product" category, the Garbage Truck Simulator 2011 game is coming this May.

There's something that's up in Portal 2 land. Game Informer's web site reports that it received a memo today. That memo leads to an web site address with the above image and countdown clock that happens to expire at 9 pm Eastern time tonight or less than two hours from this news post.

Game Informer speculates that this could be the first Portal 2 DLC release thanks to the memo mentioning "Pneumatic Diversity Tubes". These tubes were shown in videos for Valve's puzzle shooter sequel in 2010 when the game was first announced but for some reason didn't make it into the final build of the game. Will this be the first of many DLC releases? Stay tuned.

Update: Looks like whatever the update is will have to wait; the site is currently down.

Update 2: False alarm: It's just the creators of the Valve ARG Wiki thanking Valve and the game developers of The Potato Pack for their role in the Portal 2 ARG.

An extensive behind-the-scenes feature on the making of Portal 2 is now available to read, but at the moment the only format for the article is via downloading an app for the Apple iPad. GameTrailers.com host Geoff Keighley is doing something a little different for his feature The Final Hours of Portal 2.

The article can be downloaded for the iPad via iTunes for $1.99. For that amount you get a huge 15,000 word feature that shines a spotlight on all of the development behind Valve's hit puzzle shooter sequel. It chronicles Valve's efforts to make the game, including a canceled plan to make a prequel to Portal set in the 1950, via exclusive photos, videos and other "interactive experiences". It will be interesting to see if this experiment in game journalism is a sales success. There's no word if the app will be made available for other platforms.

As expected, developer Valve has moved quickly and released the first patch for the PC version of Portal 2. The patch, delivered automatically via Steam, has a number of bug fixes and a new feature that enables joystick support in the game.

Among some of the bug fixes listed in the patch notes are dealing with the "unrecoverable black screen in elevator save" and also fixing a "GC memory leak". There have also been some "various localization content improvements" including adding "support for English subtitles in Turkish builds". Various fixes for unnamed game crashes have also been put into the patch.