Free Portal downloaded 1.5m times

By Tom Bramwell Published 20 May, 2010

Less likely to crash on Mac, apparently.

Portal has been downloaded 1.5 million times since Valve made it free last week to promote the launch of Steam for the Mac.

According to a post on the Steam website, the game is also only one fifth as likely to crash on Mac as on Windows.

Other cool stats: around two thirds of Steam's new Mac userbase are running it on laptops, and over 11 per cent of sales on Steam in the past week have been for Mac.

Portal is free until 24th May on both PC and Mac.

It's one of the games that uses the "Steam Play" feature, whereby buyers - or in this case downloaders - can access the software on either PC or Mac without having to pay for both separately.

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About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (25) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Boomerang #1 2 years ago

    Downloaded this recently as i'm aware of its reputation but have never played it. Am i missing out on some of gaming's great moments, or simply an excellent and innovative game?

  • ignatiusjreilly #2 2 years ago

    missing out on some of gaming's great moments,

    This.

    I guess it depends on what excites you most about gaming, but this is still my favourite video game release of the last ten years. It may not have got as much play time from me as something like Morrowind or Battlefield 2, but I'd always turn to this game first if an intelligent person asked me "what's so good about video games?".
    Edited by 1 at 20/05/10 @ 09:43

  • StueyBoy16 #3 2 years ago

    an excellent and innovative game

    and this.

  • Katana-Bob #4 2 years ago

    It's good, and a refreshing take on the first person "shooter" genre. It's short though, but I found it perfect because I get bored with most games after a dozen hours or so. I never found the whole cake and GLADOS thing to be very funny or special, but it keeps you going till the end, regardless.

    It's fun, but most of all, it doesn't feel like anything else you've played before. That means a lot in this stagnant game generation we're experiencing.

  • 3william56 #5 2 years ago

    @Boomerang: All of the above...

    Steam on Mac - great.
    Portal for Free - mindblowing.
    Finally getting sung to by a gun turret - icing on the cake.

    (If it is just a cake)


    For the doubters - download a bit slow on day 1 (not surprising if 1.5million Mac voices suddenly cried out in joy then were suddenly silenced), but not a frame rate hiccup in sight (even after turning up the detail levels on my 2.8Ghz dual core iMac), and Portal plays beautifully on a magic mouse and chicklet keyboard.

    SteaMac last week, Froyo (we hope) and PS3 movie downloads this week. Gadget life is gooooooood... \o/

  • Dylbot #6 2 years ago

    Seriously, if you're not one of the 1.5m (or don't already own it), download it. Download it now. It'll run like butter on the most modest of specs (C2D 2ghz, 2gb RAM, 8600M GT here - goes at a steady 60fps with all the options except AA up high, and that's at 2x). No excuses.

  • altitude2k #7 2 years ago

    Still haven't downloaded this - it's sitting in the queue. Need to do it at some point.

  • Segnit #8 2 years ago

    I was one of the 1.5 million. I already own the game but not on PC.

    This game is laugh out loud funny and frankly very very entertaining. To me this Gen has been all about Super Mario Galaxy, Batman Arkham Asylum and Portal!

  • dr_faulk #9 2 years ago

    It's less likely to crash on my Mac because it won't run because of my old video card. =(

    Oh, and, I may have said it before: I would willingly bet £100 that the herself and her damn gun will appear in Episode 3.

  • dr_faulk #10 2 years ago

    Also, I really really wish I could sit down and play Portal for the first time, again.

  • Toothball #11 2 years ago

    I wanted to download it for free, but I've had it for years already. I told all my friends about it but they already had it too. I regret nothing though.

    @dr_faulk
    Good call, pity they haven't invented amnesia-on-demand yet.
    Edited by 1 at 20/05/10 @ 10:39

  • geeza2020 #12 2 years ago

    good. this game needs to be recognised a lot more. Such a wonderful change from all the bland war themed first person shooters out there.

  • septimus #13 2 years ago

    Never had the game crash on Windows tbh. Odd statement.

    It does run a hell of a lot slower in OSX though. 2/3 to 1/2 the frame rate on the same hardware.

    Great game though.

  • Bakerman #14 2 years ago

    Just waiting for Half-Life 2 to be available for Macs; the perfect excuse to play both episodes again. Preferably when the Starcraft 2 beta ends!

  • Freek #15 2 years ago

    If you haven't played Protal, but have heard much about it, I doubt it's possible to still enjoy it as much as people who simply came into the experience without any hype or expectations.
    You could even go so far as to say that the Portal fanbase has ruined the game for everybody else.

  • jonbwfc #16 2 years ago

    @Milky1985 "I want to know where that stat came from really."
    I suspect that like a lot of apps, Portal (or possible the Steam layer) has a crash reporter built in. i.e. when the game crashes Steam gathers up some data (e.g. what the games was doing at the time, what the system you're running on it is, what OS version etc) and sends it back to Valve, so they can look at where the game is crashing most often over the whole population of gamers and decide how to prioritise bug fixes. MS and Apple obviously do it and so do a lot of others, I'd be surprised if Valve didn't.

    Given that assumption, saying that the Mac version crashes 20% of the rate of the Windows version is simple maths. Take the mac user base, compare it to an equivalent Windows user base over the same period, count the number of crashes, divide one by the other. Anyone beyond the age of 11 could do it given the right data to start with.

    And what other apps have to be running at the same time isn't something you really take out of the equation. On a Windows box you can't hardly switch the AV off even if it's crashing your game, can you?


  • makariel #17 2 years ago

    I usually take hype with a spoonful of salt and never got the orange box. Downloaded Portal last weekend and love it thanks to the brilliant game mechanics, clever levels and sense of humor. Wouldn't say 'best game ever' but pretty close... waiting for Portal 2 now \o/

  • ignatiusjreilly #18 2 years ago

    On a Windows box you can't hardly switch the AV off even if it's crashing your game, can you?

    Sure you can. It used to be recommended to switch it off for best performance, but not usually necessary now.

  • ignatiusjreilly #19 2 years ago

    @Milky1985

    It does come from the hardware survey, although Valve only describe it as a "sneak peak at some of the preliminary findings". A complete report will be available next month so you'll be able to look into it more closely.

    [link url=http://store .steampowered.com/news/3837/
    ]http://store .steampowered.com/news/3837/
    [/link]

  • brod #20 2 years ago

    Farmville: 80 million
    Free portal: 1.5 million

    Oh dear.

  • Zaltan #21 2 years ago

    Portal's also 50% slower on Mac. So 20% of the crashes x 50% of the framerate = something I think... It is nice to play Portal on the train though.

  • kangarootoo #22 2 years ago

    Besides the fact that Portal is a fantastic game, the big news here imo is the cross platform purchase entitlement. It is the a solution to the same "so now I have to buy all my music again because I replaced my record player with a CD player" problem that has been around in the music business for years (well... sort of).

    Massive Kudos to Valve for tackling this in a sensible and fair fashion.

  • Zaltan #23 2 years ago

    Good point kangarootoo - As much as I like Portal I'd f'king love to play Half Life 2 on a train!

  • Wyrm #24 2 years ago

    'Farmville: 80 million
    Free portal: 1.5 million

    Oh dear. '

    Not really a surprise though, is it? Portals tech-savvy appeal is aimed squarely at nerds.

  • Windypops #25 2 years ago

    I'm also one of the 1.5 million.

    Already completed Portal on Xbox, but quite fancied giving it another go with keyboard and mouse.

    Despite being a smug Mac owner, I have to concede that a MacBook Pro keyboard is shite for playing shooters on. Frame rate seemed decent enough, though. Technically it seems fine.

    I suspect the "crashes less on Mac" quote is a clever bit of marketing by Valve. If anything's going to get the Mac users signing up in droves, it's quoting some meaningless statistic that makes Mac sound better than Windows.