Portal 2 early launch? [Update: Gotcha!]

Valve’s ARG seems to be hinting at an early launch of Portal 2 for today, and we’re not talking about stores breaking the street date, as some have already (with walkthrough videos flooding YouTube in the past 24 hours.)

According to Kotaku, the ARG has been poured over, and one decoding seems interesting: Messages decoded by community members also hint at a possible early launch for Portal 2. “4/19/2011_7AM=4/15/2011_9AM” implies that Valve may open the floodgates four days ahead of schedule, while other in-fiction text fragments reference early releases and being “ahead of schedule” without saying anything outright.

If that weren’t enough, there’s a countdown on the Aperture Science website.

Our guess? Preorders on Steam for the PC and PlayStation 3 will get early access.

Update: Gotcha! It has been replaced by this:

One has to wonder, though. “Computing power”? Bars representing Steam games and how many people are playing on each one? Is Valve stating that if people start playing Steam all at once, enough “power” will be released so Portal 2 can be released earlier? Is this like clapping your hands to resurrect Tinkerbell?