Monday, March 8th 2010
Valve to Deliver Steam and Source on Mac
Valve announced today it will bring Steam, Valve's gaming service, and Source, Valve's gaming engine, to the Mac. Steam and Valve's library of games including Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series will be available in April. "As we transition from entertainment as a product to entertainment as a service, customers and developers need open, high-quality Internet clients," said Gabe Newell, President of Valve. "The Mac is a great platform for entertainment services."
"Our Steam partners, who are delivering over a thousand games to 25 million Steam clients, are very excited about adding support for the Mac," said Jason Holtman, Director of Business Development at Valve. "Steamworks for the Mac supports all of the Steamworks APIs, and we have added a new feature, called Steam Play, which allows customers who purchase the product for the Mac or Windows to play on the other platform free of charge. For example, Steam Play, in combination with the Steam Cloud, allows a gamer playing on their work PC to go home and pick up playing the same game at the same point on their home Mac. We expect most developers and publishers to take advantage of Steam Play."
"We looked at a variety of methods to get our games onto the Mac and in the end decided to go with native versions rather than emulation," said John Cook, Director of Steam Development. "The inclusion of WebKit into Steam, and of OpenGL into Source gives us a lot of flexibility in how we move these technologies forward. We are treating the Mac as a tier-1 platform so all of our future games will release simultaneously on Windows, Mac, and the Xbox 360. Updates for the Mac will be available simultaneously with the Windows updates. Furthermore, Mac and Windows players will be part of the same multiplayer universe, sharing servers, lobbies, and so forth. We fully support a heterogeneous mix of servers and clients. The first Mac Steam client will be the new generation currently in beta testing on Windows."
Portal 2 will be Valve's first simultaneous release for Mac and Windows. "Checking in code produces a PC build and Mac build at the same time, automatically, so the two platforms are perfectly in lock-step," said Josh Weier, Portal 2 Project Lead. "We're always playing a native version on the Mac right alongside the PC. This makes it very easy for us and for anyone using Source to do game development for the Mac."
Support for the Mac in Source and Steamworks is available to third parties immediately.
Source:
Steam
"Our Steam partners, who are delivering over a thousand games to 25 million Steam clients, are very excited about adding support for the Mac," said Jason Holtman, Director of Business Development at Valve. "Steamworks for the Mac supports all of the Steamworks APIs, and we have added a new feature, called Steam Play, which allows customers who purchase the product for the Mac or Windows to play on the other platform free of charge. For example, Steam Play, in combination with the Steam Cloud, allows a gamer playing on their work PC to go home and pick up playing the same game at the same point on their home Mac. We expect most developers and publishers to take advantage of Steam Play."
"We looked at a variety of methods to get our games onto the Mac and in the end decided to go with native versions rather than emulation," said John Cook, Director of Steam Development. "The inclusion of WebKit into Steam, and of OpenGL into Source gives us a lot of flexibility in how we move these technologies forward. We are treating the Mac as a tier-1 platform so all of our future games will release simultaneously on Windows, Mac, and the Xbox 360. Updates for the Mac will be available simultaneously with the Windows updates. Furthermore, Mac and Windows players will be part of the same multiplayer universe, sharing servers, lobbies, and so forth. We fully support a heterogeneous mix of servers and clients. The first Mac Steam client will be the new generation currently in beta testing on Windows."
Portal 2 will be Valve's first simultaneous release for Mac and Windows. "Checking in code produces a PC build and Mac build at the same time, automatically, so the two platforms are perfectly in lock-step," said Josh Weier, Portal 2 Project Lead. "We're always playing a native version on the Mac right alongside the PC. This makes it very easy for us and for anyone using Source to do game development for the Mac."
Support for the Mac in Source and Steamworks is available to third parties immediately.
92 Comments on Valve to Deliver Steam and Source on Mac
Second, the Unigine engine has been written in OpenGL with all the same effects for Linux (I'm assuming MacOSx eventually). Unfortunately, it still hasn't been released due to 1) a current lack of tessellating hardware from nVidia, and 2) a lack of good tessellating support Linux drivers from AMD. However, that means that Unigine games have the potential for release also on non-Microsoft operating systems!
In the MacOSx graphics market, the best of the beAst gpu is currently the Radeon HD 4870 (not sure if there's a 1GB model, only 512mb I think). From what I understand, even with Apple's ATI drivers, it handles Modern Warefare 1 really well (I think the most intensive Mac game). Perhaps if Valve does well on Steam with OSx, we will see a release of Modern Warefare 2 on the Mac as well.
Seriously though are we going to be tied into one PC like with iPods?
CS kiddies: OMFG HAX YOU SUCKZOR WTF GAY
Xbox live: $%^&IO$&**^%^&^*$^& (its all swearing and gay jokes)
Mac users: "dont shoot the poor rabies victims! they deserve LOVE!" "how do i melee? i have no 'right click'? "
1- Mac hardware is really weak in terms of performance (apple is only thinking about money when they built it) and this is an epic fail for mac users.
2-games on mac will use OpenGL, and OpenGL at this time is really embarrassing even for Khronos Group itself , at this time OpenGL is really nothing compared to directX11 and there is no way that Mac games can get the same graphics lvl and effects that PC games has not even close to it, even if the hardware can handle it.
1. only their video cards are weak. they use intel core 2 based systems nowadays.
2. no valve game uses DX11 - hell, none even use DX10 yet.
Lost Planet: Extreme Condition -DirectX 9.0
Bioshock 2 -DirectX 9.0
The Orange Box -DirectX 9.0
Left 4 Dead 2 -DirectX 9.0
Team Fortress -DirectX 9.0
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 -DirectX 9.0
-some DirectX10 and 11 games:
Assassin's Creed II -DirectX 10.1
Mass Effect 2-DirectX 10
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat -DirectX11
DiRT 2 -DirectX 11
Battlefield Bad Company 2 -DirectX 11
ofc some of these games will run on OpenGL and older DX versions but this will be at the cost of image quality, and FYI there are many other DirectX 11 games coming soon for Steam including new versions of some current DirectX9 titles with DX11 support.
*source Steam website.
As soon as true DX11 engines start coming out and the next-gen consoles are announced, they'll have to update Source.
Mussels said "2. no valve game uses DX11 - hell, none even use DX10 yet. "
This does not mean they do not use Direct X it means they use direct x 9.
*thumbs up*
And I thought they added OpenGL to Source as well.
Now, if we could just move past the crappy Mac deal and get onto Linux, then we are talking! Although, like everything: one little baby step at a time!