Valve Mysteriously Updates Portal, Internet Matlocks Go Nuts

Portal, the space and mind-pending bending first person puzzler from Valve is an incredible game, and it’s just received a particularly mysterious update. The PC version of the game has been updated, but nobody’s quite sure why yet though. The peculiarly cryptic changelog reads  “”Changed radio transmission frequency to comply with federal and state spectrum management regulations”

It’s also received a new achievement called “Transmission Received,” but with no information on how to acquire it. Also included in the update was a host of new sound files – all white noise and morse code -  that are triggered by doing things with the radio in the starting pod. This is where it starts to get really interesting…

Some clever fellows on the Valve forums ran the sound files through a Slow-Scan Television program. If you’re unaware, SSTV is used to transmit still images via radio band. What they found was really bloody interesting. See the pictures obtained from the sound files here : Valve.

People have also been hard at work decoding the morse-code – some of which translates to 32bit MD5 signatures, others to plain text and all sorts of other completely insane things. check the code thread here.

What could it all mean? Nobody’s quite figured it out yet – and it could just be a case of Valve doing some pretty impressive trolling. It could however lead to the announcement of something big…really big. Episode 3, perhaps?

Put on your detective hats – and tell us what you think it could all be.

Last Updated: March 2, 2010