Portal: Revolution is a free to play mod for Portal 2. This fully featured original campaign plays before Portal 2 in the dead and decaying Enrichment Center...
In addition to what others have said (all those examples are equally misleading IMHO), given that its the 25th Anniversary of Half-Life, a lot of us are primed to hope for news of a new game from Valve.
Without any prior knowledge if a trailer for Portal: Prelude were released today it would be equally as confusing. The flash version wouldn’t be since it would be strange for Valve to make a flash version of anything officially, so that’d set off flags, the Half-Life ones likely would be confusing as well, purely from a “released a trailer with a very clean logo and the word official in the title” standpoint, not really a general product naming standpoint, but that series is more dormant, so maybe it’s less likely to be confusing.
How does it “feel official”? It’s just what a lot of mods do:
These are just a few I can think of, you can find more on Steam and ModDB.
In addition to what others have said (all those examples are equally misleading IMHO), given that its the 25th Anniversary of Half-Life, a lot of us are primed to hope for news of a new game from Valve.
Without any prior knowledge if a trailer for Portal: Prelude were released today it would be equally as confusing. The flash version wouldn’t be since it would be strange for Valve to make a flash version of anything officially, so that’d set off flags, the Half-Life ones likely would be confusing as well, purely from a “released a trailer with a very clean logo and the word official in the title” standpoint, not really a general product naming standpoint, but that series is more dormant, so maybe it’s less likely to be confusing.
Dont forget Hunt Down the Freeman… Remember that dumpster fire? Pee-yew.