I believe it represents the number of potatoes people have earned on their steam profiles in the ARG. I'm not sure of the details as I haven't gotten involved in it myself, but I believe people earn potatoes by doing things in the potato sack bundle games.
Do we need to buy the potato collection, can't we just play the games we already own from the collection?
This! Honestly though, I'd probably have bought it myself if I could afford it because there's a few games in the bundle that I'd like to have anyway. Alas, I'll just have to observe from the outside as everyone else throws their money at Valve. One thing's for sure, they know how to drum up hype and generate sales. I've never heard of a company managing to use the release hype of one game to sell vast numbers of copies of 13 other games - It's genius marketing. I'd say that works fine. As far as I know the games in the bundle received the appropriate updates even if you already had them. I could be wrong though, haven't tried it yet myself. Edit: -------- Joe gave me an idea. How about we harrass the F@H monkies in the CPC subforum into donating their cycles to GLaDOS instead of that silly protein-folding business? If this isn't a worthwhile cause I don't know what is..
Mine did that at 5:48am this morning, along with a ~400mb patch for TF2 and some other minor patches for other source games. Any patches we see for Portal 2 between now and release are probably just last-minute fixes and preparations to make sure it all works smoothly when the time comes. It's just valve taking full advantage of digital distribution, I figure.
Ok fair enough. Gotta laugh at the kids erupting on the Steam forums, screaming the house down and crying about how unfair it is. I have 7 of the games and will play my part tonight to grab these spuds. From Steam News: This weekend is the last chance to pre-purchase Portal 2. Get your copy now, save 10% and be ready to play the moment it is released. Help release Portal 2 early: From now until release, play any or all of games in The Potato Sack to expedite the launch of Portal 2. Your efforts will be tracked on the official GLaDOS@home page. Each game in The Potato Sack has received a massive Portal-themed update, making a collection of 13 hit indie games even better. So why not get a taste of Portal 2 now while you help launch it?
I'm just enjoying the ARG from a spectator's perspective. I love all this excitement and hype. I haven't been so excited about a game's release since HL2 itself.
It would seem that leaving one of the games running but minimised might still count as playing it. At least the play time for a game still increases while it is minimised.
Don't know if this should go here... Killing Floor updated, the changelog says the aperture level has been updated and now "her chamber is open" with a new achiev for "entering GlaDoS' core room"
Pretty sure GLaDOS is the trader. Been meaning to try it out, Killing Floor is always good fun anyway.
Unfortunately, this is not the case: And a handy dandy guide to getting those spuds: https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1vPutCkoZKA9XL5ZjSuNXfX8NfoeHW3xcrv7DgalKUfE&pli=1&ndplr=1
