In a blog post on May 10th, Valve released the authoring tools for Portal 2 to the public. This means that fans can now make their own Portal 2 maps, skins, models, sound effects and music. I think this officially makes Portal 2 my top game for 2011. Of course, this does mean that for every amazing fan made map, we’ll probably see 5 god awful pieces of crap and 10 phallic shaped maps.

Here's the official announcement.

“Today we're opening up the beta of the Portal 2 Authoring Tools to everyone! It's available as a free download for all owners of the PC version of Portal 2 and can be found under the "Tools" tab in Steam.

The Portal 2 Authoring Tools include versions of the same tools we used to make Portal 2. They'll allow you to create your own singleplayer and co-op maps, new character skins, 3D models, sound effects, and music.

Here's what's included:
- Updated version of Hammer, the Source level editor
- Updated Faceposer
- Example maps and instances to help build new maps
- Updated suite of command-line compiling utilities

If you want to get started on the beta, we suggest joining two mailing lists:
Portal 2 List
General Source List

This is beta software, so if you have any problems or issues, please send them to the p2mapper email list.

Get out there and show us what devious puzzles you've all been brainstorming!”