Portal: Revolution Is Basically a Full-Sized Fan-Made Prequel Releasing Very Soon

ign.com:

Nearly 13 years after the debut of Portal 2, fans of the beloved first-person puzzle game were supposed to be rewarded with the Jan. 5 release of a prequel campaign from Second Face Software. The fan-made mod, dubbed Portal: Revolution, will add over eight hours of gameplay and 40 new test chambers to the sequel game.

Instead, those who opened Steam today were met with a disappointing announcement from the game's devs in lieu of new Portal content.

"Right off the bat, I want to say that the game is done," the message reads. "We could ship at any moment, but Valve has yet to review and accept the game for release."

The note continues on to explain how all games on Steam are beholden to a review process by Valve before developers can even have the option to punch the release button. The Portal: Revolution developers first submitted their build for review Dec. 20 but had yet to hear back from Valve before the mod's intended Jan. 5 release date.

"Even though we’re done on our part, we can’t ship," the developers wrote. "In hindsight, we should have seen this coming and we definitely learned [our] lesson to not ship during holidays again."

The developers acknowledged that they were, indeed, warned in advance by Steam Support that reduced staffing during the holiday season leads to much longer review times. Any other time of year, this process normally takes between 2-3 business days, according to the Portal: Revolution developers, though it's advised games be submitted at least two weeks before their shipping date.

As the announcement was being posted to the Steam storefront, the Portal: Revolution team heard back from Valve that the build is now under review. Once accepted, the game devs said they would update fans with a revised