CultureQuiet 10d · day 11

Leakers piece together playable build of Valve's scrapped Portal prequel F-Stop

Three separate leaks, including source code handed out for free this week, combine into a nearly complete version of the 2007 experiment.

A nearly complete, playable version of F-Stop, Valve's canceled 2007 camera-based Portal prequel, has been reconstructed by leakers almost 20 years after its cancellation.
The build combines the August Steam2 depot leak (most assets) with source code and map data leaked via the Valve Cut Content Discord in the past 48 hours.
Players report the reconstruction is roughly 99 percent complete, missing only some assets and dialogue lines, with full playthroughs clocking in under an hour.
F-Stop's camera-based object-capture mechanic never shipped, though some dialogue and ideas were later folded into Portal 2.

“Directed Design Experiments”
Valve, internal project name · Kotaku ↗ · Oct 31

Gabe Newell Valve co-founderValve Cut Content team Community archival/leak groupAnonymous leakers Source of leaked data

Nov 2Nov 3Nov 4Nov 5Nov 6Nov 7Nov 8Nov 9yesterdaynow · 11:47 PM ET

1 Nov 1

Community assembles a nearly complete, playable F-Stop

Leakers and the Valve Cut Content team combine the three leaked sources into a playable build of F-Stop, verified as authentic; players report it is about 99 percent complete with only a few missing assets and dialogue lines, and full playthrough videos run under an hour.

““99 percent complete” is a hell of a lot more than the 0 percent complete we had this time last week.”
— Lewis Parker
backgroundOct 30

F-Stop's source code and map data leak via Discord — The missing source code and mapsrc data for F-Stop surface on the Valve Cut Content project's Discord server; according to server mods, the person who leaked the mapsrc files initially asked for $1,000 before giving them away for free.
backgroundAug 15

Massive Steam2 depot leak surfaces online — A roughly 12-to-13-terabyte leak of Steam depot data from 2003-2013, dubbed Steam2, leaks online and is later found to contain most of F-Stop's game assets, though not its source code or map source data.
backgroundJan 1, 2007

Valve builds F-Stop during its Directed Design Experiments — In 2007 Valve split into five teams for a three-month period later dubbed the Directed Design Experiments; one team built F-Stop, a Portal prequel built around a camera mechanic for capturing and placing objects. The project was ultimately scrapped, though some dialogue and mechanics were reused in Portal 2.