Projected Launch (after filling bars for 3 of 13 games):
52h:19m
(4am ish tuesday PST).


Default launch with no work:
54h:48m
(6am ish tuesday PST)

So really, its only going to launch 2 and a half hours early from all that work. Even if every bar fills (which is NOT going to happen), valve is at most gonna let it launch 10 or so hours early. My guess is that all this work and money will only end up launching the game 5 or 6 hours early.

Plus, what if valve ends up delaying the release for a few hours anyway? People expected a midnight release of hl2 and that didn't happen.

So far its all kinda a yawn to me.

Edit: Those release time estimators are way off since they don't take into account a couple factors.
The biggest one is that they think the bar filling is how much unlocking is happening. ITS NOT. The bar at the top is how much time is completed towards the finish line. So waiting 24 hours out of the 96 is by default going to show 25% done. Add the extra hour from 1 unlock and that only advances the bar another 1% for a total of 26%.
The actual formula to estimate is going to be a differential equation that has a steady unchanging rate increase in bar tied to time and a estimated additional rate that's dependant on how fast the bars are unlocking and how much CPUs are available AND the potato factor which is ever increasing. Plus each game's bar is NOT equal. Look at how many people are playing killing floor and its not going up much. My guess is valve did each game's bar based on some percentage of total owners and there's tons more killing floor owners.

All this stuff about upsetting retail partners. Aint gonna happen. The game will unlock earliest at midnight east coast. More likely midnight west coast. So yeah, its on for Tuesday release, just slightly earlier Tuesday. Valve isn't about to break their own release date, they are about the money and they don't think the money is in upsetting retail. If they did, they would have had a bigger discount on digital copies.

This comment was edited on Apr 17, 2011, 03:35.