US — The Verge

A fully playable version of Portal prequel F-Stop leaked

SoftwareNovember 2, 20261 min read

Fans have put together a playable version of F-Stop, a Portal prequel from Valve that was canceled. The game is built around taking pictures to move objects.

A canceled game comes back to life

People in the Valve Cut Content Discord have pieced together a nearly complete, playable version of F-Stop. Earlier, a huge 12-terabyte leak in August gave them most of the game's files. The last missing parts, the source code and map data, reached the group this week.

A very different kind of Portal

F-Stop is not like the main Portal games. Its key idea is a camera. You take a picture of an item to capture it, then place it somewhere else using the Polaroid-style photo. Some of its dialog and ideas later appeared in Portal 2.

Key facts

The 12-terabyte leak came out in August.
The full campaign videos each run under one hour, so the game is short.
F-Stop was made during a three-month period in 2007.
During that period, Valve split into five teams to build new game experiments.

Why it matters

This lets players see a game that was never released. It also shows how Valve tested new ideas in 2007, and how some of those ideas later shaped Portal 2.

What to watch

Whether Valve responds to the leak or the fan-made version.
How the community plays and shares the game.

Glossary

Portal: A popular puzzle video game series made by Valve, known for its portal gun.
Valve: A video game company that makes games like Portal and Half-Life.
F-Stop: A canceled Portal prequel built around a camera that captures and moves items.
Discord: A chat app where groups talk, share files, and organize around topics.
Polaroid: A brand of instant cameras that print photos right away.

Here’s what ‘renoa’ — the first new fiber in 25 years — feels like

Everbloom has developed renoa, a fiber made from waste protein such as cashmere and wool scraps and bedding-industry feather lint, blended with a biodegradable biopolymer. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission recently approved it as the first new fiber classification in 25 years. A reviewer who tested a renoa-cashmere 80/20 blend said it felt very close to real cashmere, and the first consumer products are expected to reach the market in the second quarter of 2027.

Softwareheise onlineNov 1

Missing Link: Inverted Mouse Controls – is the 1990s to blame?

Inverted vertical aiming, where pushing the mouse forward looks up instead of down, was once common among top players such as Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel, who used it in Quake. Today almost no professional players invert the Y-axis, and the article explores why the practice has become rare. It also notes that many current games make inversion hard to set up, and that Professor Jochen Koubek finds it feels natural because of embodiment.

Software전자신문Nov 1

"Does Holding More Meetings Mean More Work Gets Done?" Zoom Moves to Change Work Methods with AI

Zoom product and engineering president Velchamy Shankarlingam said in San Jose, California, that meeting count or attendance does not determine output, and that the goal is to raise real work performance. Zoom is adding AI features such as "My Notes," which summarizes meetings and reports decisions and follow-ups, and is building a unified context layer that lets AI carry out follow-up tasks, along with data-sensitivity controls, central agent monitoring, and deepfake detection.

SoftwareZDNet KoreaNov 1

Reddit's Stock Plunge and What It Means

Reddit shares fell 29.22% in one day on October 30 to close at $91.73, their largest single-day drop since the 2024 IPO, despite a 53% year-on-year revenue increase in Q3. The company warned that search referrals from Google fell sharply, with daily unique visitors likely to decline in the low double digits in Q4, and CEO Steve Huffman blamed Google's AI search features for sending fewer users to the platform.