Kim Swift, lead designer on Portal, has joined Xbox Game Studios to work on its publishing programme.

Xbox announced the hire today via a Twitter post which mentioned Swift's role would be to "accelerate our innovation and collaborate with independent studios to build games for the cloud".

Swift is most famous for her stint at Valve, which began when her portal-based game demo Narbacular Drop impressed Valve bosses and she was roped on board.

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A movie version of Portal is back on track, Star Trek and Lost director J.J. Abrams has said, nearly a decade after we first heard of its existence.

The project still sounds far-off, and there's no word on what has been holding up development - but the wheels now seem to be turning.

"We actually do have a script that's being written for the Portal movie now at [Warner Bros.]," Abrams said today (thanks, IGN) "We're really excited about the take and the pitch, so it feels like that thing's finally on the rails.

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Over a decade since it was cancelled, Valve's unreleased Portal prequel, F-Stop has been revived via an unusual source: an indie developer.

F-Stop, which began life as a Valve experiment before it was set to be the next Portal game following the release of the Orange Box in 2007, revolved around taking pictures in the game world, with the pictures then used to create in-game objects. Portals and the Portal gun were nowhere to be seen.

F-Stop was eventually canned and Valve went on to release Portal 2 in April 2011. Gameplay of F-Stop was never officially released, with Valve keeping its cards close to its chest in case it fancied returning to the in-game camera mechanic. But now, over a decade later, an indie developer has said it has permission from Valve itself to show off the F-Stop mechanic using F-Stop's source code - and it released a video revealing how it all works.

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CS:GO went three to play and got a battle royale mode last week - but the surprises didn't end there, as players discovered a cryptic message which some speculated was an ARG to tease Portal 3. Despite the best efforts of CS:GO sleuths, however, Valve has since confirmed this is actually just an Easter egg - although it's still a pretty neat discovery.

The fun and games began when YouTube user snaileny posted a video of a "strange broadcast" they'd found on the new battle royale map dz_blacksite. According to snaileny, to hear this you have to stand in Room 3 for over two minutes before the (slightly creepy) message begins to play.

Players figured out the beginning of the list is in the NATO phonetic alphabet, and translates to PGPW50 SMS757 - the first half of which refers to the PGP word list (an extended biometric word list designed to prevent wiretapping). The transmission, when converted into the PGP word list, gives you 50 pairs of numbers and letters. Reddit user GetSomeGyros then figured out that the "SMS7" part of the message, meanwhile, refers to GSM 7-bit encoding: and when you put PGP pairings into this, you get the following message:

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Valve veteran Jay Pinkerton has returned to the developer a year after he left the company.

Pinkerton left last June, following other high profile departures from Erik Wolpaw, Chet Faliszek, and DOTA 2 writer Marc Laidlaw.

Now, thanks to eagle-eyed Redditor OWLverlord (via PC Gamer), it seems Pinkerton is back on Valve's staff page, listed under the "Other Experts" category.

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Valve has returned to the world of Portal for Moondust, a brand new virtual reality demo. Working for Aperture Science's Lunar Resources Initiative, you are sent into spaaaace to construct a modular space station, and then down onto the Moon itself for further testing.

Moondust is a sandbox experience designed to show off the Knuckles EV2, Valve's latest VR controller. Specifically, you'll be manipulating objects using the device's pinch grip technology and ability to finely detect hand poses and movement.

On board with that? Then you'll be crushing moon rocks, driving a moon buggy, building things and lobbing items onto targets in no time.

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Inspired first-person puzzle game Portal is free to download on Steam until 20th September.

Maker Valve is running the deal to showcase how Portal and Portal 2 can and have helped kids grasp trickier aspects of science in an enjoyable way.

Apparently Portal makes things like physics and problem solving "cool and fun". And that "gets us one step closer to our goal: engaged, thoughtful kids!"

Portal, a short game, is a calm and bullet-free puzzle solving experience. Twists of humour and taxing, portal-based conundrums made it one of the best games of 2007.

Eurogamer's Portal review awarded 9/10.

Video: Portal finished in nine minutes. It's not always that short.

Square Enix will release the latest game from former Valve designer and Portal co-creator Kim Swift, with an official unveiling due this weekend.

The game, which Square's tease dubs "incredibly fascinating and quirky", is being developed at Dark Void developer Airtight Games, where Swift is now a project lead. We'll find out more about the title this Saturday at the PAX Prime show in Seattle.

Swift joined Valve straight out of Washington tech college DigiPen in 2005, where she co-developed Narbacular Drop - the direct inspiration for Portal's basic mechanics. As well as Portal, she also worked on Left 4 Dead 2 before leaving for Airtight back in December 2009.

Airtight's last effort, Capcom-published jet-pack actioner Dark Void, missed the mark when it launched back in January 2010, picking up a scrappy 5/10 from Eurogamer's Dan Pearson.

Few people will praise Portal higher than lead Brink writer Ed Stern.

During a Develop Conference talk he called Valve's creation "the greatest combination of premise, setting and player interaction we're ever likely to see".

Portal 1 came as part of The Orange Box in 2007. But the bite-sized compliment to Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and Team Fortress 2 quickly whipped up tumultuous applause of its own, scoring 9/10 in Eurogamer's Portal review. "One of the most interesting and delightful things Valve has ever done," Tom Bramwell wrote.

Portal 2 had big shoes to fill. But step into them it did, by earning 10/10 in Eurogamer's Portal 2 review. "It's a masterpiece," wrote Oli Welsh.

Ed Stern's comments about Portal were made answering whether Splash Damage overwrote Brink, a multiplayer-focused game.

"Brink is about frantic running and shooting, it's not exploring this world we've set up. It's a shooter," stated Stern.

"It's not about its setting in the same way that BioShock or Dragon Age or, God help us, Portal is. Portal, for my money, [is] the greatest combination of premise, setting and player interaction we're ever likely to see.

"All of this concepting and agonising and rewriting was for a shooter game that could have been red versus blue," Stern added. "Arguably we did not need a story in the first place."

Stern said Splash Damage chose a story because "we wanted to demonstrate as a story studio that we could do this stuff". Splash Damage wanted to add meaning to proceedings, although the mid-fight chaos often negated this.

"But I'm really glad we tried," said Stern. "I do not think Brink would have been a better game for having less world [built] into it."

Brink, released in May, tried to seamlessly weld single and multiplayer gameplay. Persist past its obtuse opening and you'll discover "an exceptional team shooter", wrote Simon Park in Eurogamer's Brink review - "smart, supremely well balanced and with a unique, exciting art style".

Video: Brink: PS3 versus Xbox 360.

Hours after releasing Portal 2 on Steam, creator Valve has announced predecessor Portal has sold close to four million units.

But Portal has likely sold substantially more copies. As GameSpot reports, the four million figure excludes digital download sales from Steam.

Portal launched in 2007 as part of the superb The Orange Box compilation.

In 2008 it launched as a standalone retail product. In the same year a version called Portal: Still Alive launched on Xbox Live Arcade.

Eurogamer's Portal review turned up a 9/10. "And so we're left with a curious contradiction: one of the most interesting and delightful things Valve's ever done, but also one of its least fulfilling," wrote Tom.

Thankfully, the sequel went one better. Eurogamer's Portal 2 review has all the details.

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