At last, Portal 2’s second DLC release, the Perpetual Testing Initiative, has been released to all owners of Portal 2 for free! Featuring a brand new easy-to-use “Puzzle Maker” toolkit for creating your own test chambers, alongside integration with the Steam Workshop, allowing near-instant uploading, rating, sharing, downloading and playing custom levels; and a new side-story featuring Cave Johnson – you absolutely cannot miss this thing. If all goes well, Portal 2 should be downloading and installing the new DLC update as you’re reading this article. In addition, Portal 2’s Steam Workshop section is now live.

If your Portal 2 has not updated yet, and is showing no signs of doing so, consider simply starting up the game/restarting Steam/verifying your game cache; or in some cases, uninstalling Portal 2 (but don’t worry, the Steam Cloud will restore everything). Keep in mind that it is a sizeable update, with an average size of 815 MB.

While you wait for the download to finish, check out the redesigned official Portal 2 website, and consider reading Cave Johnson’s rant about building more test chambers, as well as Valve’s simple guide on setting up your own test chamber in the new Puzzle Maker. You might also be interested in reading my impressions of the Perpetual Testing Initiative itself, which you’ll find in our review. Once all that’s done… get testing!