Valve Complete Pack Rewarded to Potato Sack Bundle Players

To help accelerate the release of Portal 2, game developer Valve had thousands of people play a variety of indie games with hidden achievements that bestowed potato badges and as of last night we've learned that the special surprise that Valve promised players who found all 36 potatoes within all of the games in the Potato Sack Bundle were rewarded with a free Valve Complete Pack. The Valve Complete Pack is exactly what it sounds like, a $100 value of all 22 Valve games, including a free copy of Portal 2.

The gift was a complete surprise to many of the Potato Sack players who put in a lot of time and extra money to help Portal 2 come out faster. They were also able to unlock and play the Portal 2 before the rest of the general PC public who got to collectively play at 9:30 PM PST on April 18 when all of the required Potato Sack games generated enough power for GLaDOS to release the game.

But while The Complete Valve Pack was a great gift to gamers who bought the Potato Sack Bundle, it did come with one caveat: it isn't giftable. Meaning if you already had a copy of the first Portal, then when you got Portal in your new Valve Complete Pack you aren't getting anything new or special and can't gift the extra copy of the game to friends.

• DETAILS: The Complete Portal 2 Review

Also, I'd imagine that most of the people who are such die hard Valve fans that were trying to get Portal 2 to come out early would already have most of the Valve games anyway. This makes the gifting issue seem even more unfortunate.

However, many people were complaining that they had to spend $35 towards the price of the Potato Sack Bundle on top of the price of Portal 2, so with this gift from Valve they were repaid in full for their efforts and then some if they didn't already have the games.

• VIDEO: Portal 2 First 15 Minutes

Were you one of the people who managed to find all 36 potatoes in the Potato Sack Bundle? What do you think of this special gift for the players who found all of them?

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