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[Haschel]

More brick-and-mortar stores are doing deals like that recently. They want people to keep coming to actual stores instead of buying everything online, so they offer deals with gift cards. If I understood this deal right, when you go in and buy the game you get preorder price ($45) and they give you a $10 gift card.

Gift cards are funny things in that they're not a discount, strictly speaking, they're more of a guaranteed future purchase. Gift cards CAN be used on a purchase for exactly their value but that doesn't happen all that often. It's more likely that someone will come in, see something for $20 (or more) and think "oh I've got this gift card, so it's really like it's only $10." Then you get people thinking they've saved on the initial Portal 2 purchase AND some future purchase, whereas they've only ACTUALLY saved on the second. Plus by only offering this deal if you come into the store, you force people to walk in and walk past all sorts of other things they might want to buy to pick up the game and get to the register before they can even get the deal, so you might get some more sales that way, too.

That's what I was assuming it was at first, but looking here seems to say otherwise. With in-store shipping the game comes out to about two bucks cheaper than a two-pack on steam, AND you get the $10 gift card to boot. I didn't look closely at any fine-print, so I could be wrong. As for the two-pack pricing, yeah, it's neat. But none of my buddies IRL use PCs, so I had to split mine with an online buddy, which means paypal gets involved since steam doesn't have any way to split the bill between accounts (that I know of). I play with a few guys across many different games, and we're a really tight group so I'm lucky enough for that to work. It just irks me to come across a deal like that for a brand new game, which I've personally never encountered before. New games are generally pretty standardized in pricing.

[Bluerobin]

Oh, huh, good to know. I went on my whole gift card tirade for naught then

[Comp112]

Yarp, I only paid about $38 for the game, gonna pick it up Tuesday.

Oddly enough, they are shipping me the gift card...

[Draco18s]

Alright, so we have a few more time-reduction data points.

It's *$%@ing random.  Seriously.

Spoiler: "wide image" (click to show/hide)

"Percent Remaining" is the reduction as a percentage of remaining time (before the reduction).
"Minutes" is the actual number of minutes of the reduction
"Per Hour" is the number of "man hour" required in a given game to get one minute of reduction.

[Scaraban]

Alright, so we have a few more time-reduction data points.

It's *$%@ing random.  Seriously.

Spoiler: "wide image" (click to show/hide)

"Percent Remaining" is the reduction as a percentage of remaining time (before the reduction).
"Minutes" is the actual number of minutes of the reduction
"Per Hour" is the number of "man hour" required in a given game to get one minute of reduction.

Wut?

[Draco18s]

Alright, so we have a few more time-reduction data points.

It's *$%@ing random.  Seriously.

Spoiler: "wide image" (click to show/hide)

"Percent Remaining" is the reduction as a percentage of remaining time (before the reduction).
"Minutes" is the actual number of minutes of the reduction
"Per Hour" is the number of "man hour" required in a given game to get one minute of reduction.

Wut?

Middle chart will make the most sense.  It's each reduction in time (in minutes) in order of completion.

[dragonshardz]

Looking at the G@H pages with updated plugins to give more detail, I'm beginning to suspect that Portal 2 will not in fact be released early. Given that the number have been all over the goddamn place (at one point, the game was projected to be launched nearly a full day - sometime around 7 AM today here in AZ - ahead of schedule, but is now just 6 hours ahead of schedule here in Arizona - around 1 AM instead of 7 AM. All this leads me to conclude that Valve has engineered things so that if all 13 games get 100% full progress bars, the game will be released at or around 12 AM on the 19th.

Which sucks, because I was planning on playing Portal 2 for the vast majority of the day.

[Draco18s]

Looking at the G@H pages with updated plugins to give more detail, I'm beginning to suspect that Portal 2 will not in fact be released early. Given that the number have been all over the goddamn place (at one point, the game was projected to be launched nearly a full day - sometime around 7 AM today here in AZ - ahead of schedule, but is now just 6 hours ahead of schedule here in Arizona - around 1 AM instead of 7 AM. All this leads me to conclude that Valve has engineered things so that if all 13 games get 100% full progress bars, the game will be released at or around 12 AM on the 19th.

Which sucks, because I was planning on playing Portal 2 for the vast majority of the day.

Oh my gosh.  I was right.

Somewhere (perhaps not in this thread, though) that "Valve loves Midnight releases" and that I would be very surprised if the release got pushed back prior to midnight.

[Cecilff2]

Your Aperture Science Cooperative Testing Type is:

Weighted Companion Cube


Stalwart and dependable, you're always willing to give a friend the shirt off your back, a shoulder to cry on, or a step up. Compatible cooperative test partners include shirtless people who can't stop crying while they use you as stairs.

Don't you dare open up that aperture science intelligence disposal incinerator.  I have a knife.  I WILL cut you.

Got my last potato last night.

[Draco18s]

Congrats.
I'll pick up the one(s) for The Ball this evening.  Didn't have time yesterday.

[Cecilff2]

Yeah the Ball and Justine from Amnesia took the longest for me probably.  Or just felt the longest...I'm sure SMB probably took longer cause of the bandaids, and needing to get to the 4th world.

[Draco18s]

Oh, I'm doing the "have a save file" route for it.  Because the requirements for it are so ridiculously specific I'm surprised we know what they are.

[Levi]

Heh, this whole glados@home has really dampened my enthusiasm.  2 weeks of ARG leading up to a few hours earlier release?  I work most of the day tuesday anyway, so it doesn't actually mean anything to me.

Of course, my enthusiasm will probably be renewed when I actually start playing the game. 

[Draco18s]

Heh, this whole glados@home has really dampened my enthusiasm.  2 weeks of ARG leading up to a few hours earlier release?  I work most of the day tuesday anyway, so it doesn't actually mean anything to me.

I didn't even hear about the ARG until it was 2 hours from being "over" (i.e. 2 hours prior to the April Fools message).

And we're not really getting an early release.  It's like a store jacking up their base prices 20% and then having a 20% off sale.  Nothing's actually cheaper.

[Scaraban]

All my productivity belong to you, Valve. All of it.