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Valve to Deliver Steam and Source on Mac

btarunr

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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.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site
 
I guess I'd better go and buy a mac now!




LOL.
 
This is great for mac owner. I've wanted to play tf2 on my mac with my brother for a long time.

Will i have to purchase a "mac specific" version? or can I use my pc keyed versions?
 
Look! Mac is joining the 21st Century in more than just futuristic looks!
 
Kudos to Steam for getting this done. Should make them a good chunk of money. :)
 
^ This make me happy.
 
This is brilliant news. Even though I'm not a big mac fan it's nice to see valve trying to bring mac gaming to the same level as windows.
 
Look! Mac is joining the 21st Century in more than just futuristic looks!

:laugh: Yeah it's about time! Now I can play multi-player with my Mac buddies, but I will still blow them away with performance.;)
 
I can use Steam at work! :D
 
Good news for Mac owners! Bad news for me. Half my Mac jokes just got murdered by Valve.

It's a smart business move by Valve, so grats to the Apple fans.
 
Great news, now we just need to start seeing some reasonablely priced Macs that don't have shit graphics cards...

I wonder if the HD2600 in my iMac would even run TF2, though I am looking forward to at least counter strike, that should run.
 
This is great for the simply fact it will almost instantly gain access to dozens of games they did not have before. Good move on Steam's part and great for Apple users.
 
This isn't a win just for Mac, either, remember that Mac has *nix at the core. I wonder what usability in BSD/Linux could be like if someone hacked around with it...

Also, what gaming library will they use to deploy these games on Mac? How did they do it for COD4 (A DX game)?
 
Great news, now we just need to start seeing some reasonablely priced Macs that don't have shit graphics cards...

I wonder if the HD2600 in my iMac would even run TF2, though I am looking forward to at least counter strike, that should run.

I agree when the price comes down they will be took more seriously and when they have better GPU's they will be viable gaming platforms.

As for the 2600 it should run TF2.
 
Now does this mean only games made by Valve will be playable on Macs?

@Dannibus

I totally agree on that one, over half my arguements with my Mac friends will be lost now.:rolleyes:
 
This isn't a win just for Mac, either, remember that Mac has *nix at the core. I wonder what usability in BSD/Linux could be like if someone hacked around with it...

Also, what gaming library will they use to deploy these games on Mac? How did they do it for COD4 (A DX game)?

It will and OpenGL.
 
I wonder if the HD2600 in my iMac would even run TF2

Yep! It will for sure, and it runs with a very playable framerate! No worries there!
 
Yay, for Mac owners. Steam really is a great service.

Valve is at the top of my list as favorite game developer. They actually give a $hit about gamers while making money in the process.(a great combination)
 
sweet sense are school gave us all mac books i can play games woot!
 
Thats kwel, but that doesnt mean 100% of mac owners are going to be able to play the games, since most macs are graphically underpowered.
 
So how faraway is Steam for linux :)

If this really is based in OpenGL and not some weird licensed Apple crap cause they think everything should be made in house, about 1 step. The beauty of this is Steam is a self contained program, so all games installed through Steam, exist within the Steam program.

That basically means if they can get it installed and the connection to the internet working correctly, Linux is completely doable.
 
Thats kwel, but that doesnt mean 100% of mac owners are going to be able to play the games, since most macs are graphically underpowered.

They can pretend can't they :eek:

Some mac's can be upgraded so there is some hope in that field.
 
Anyone else see an iGame promotion soon? :roll:
 
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