News

L4D2, TF2, Portal And Steam Coming To Apple In April

5:20AM March 9, 2010 | Mike Fahey

After much speculation and some not-so-subtle hinting, Valve has officially announced a Mac version of popular gaming service Steam coming in April, and its bringing Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal and the Half-Life series with it.

While rumblings of Steam coming to the Mac platform have been stirring for quite some time, the first solid indicators came last month, when Mac-specific graphics were found in the beta test files for the new Steam service. Then Valve took things a step further, teasing Mac users with a series of images featuring popular Valve games integrated with Mac themes.

“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.”

The Mac version of Steam will include all of the features of its PC counterpart, as well as a new feature called Steam Play, which allows customers who purchase the game on one platform to download and play it for the other at no additional charge.

While it remains to be seen how many third-party developers will jump on board the Mac train, Valve is full-steam ahead on supporting the platform, eschewing popular emulation techniques to deliver native Mac games, day and date with the PC versions from here on out.

“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.”

Valve’s first simultaneous release for Mac and PC will be Portal 2, announced earlier this month.

And now Mac users will be able to experience the joy of a large Steam release. I can’t wait to share that with you guys.

Comments

  • Daniel

    March 9, 2010 at 6:52 AM

    Wheres my Episode 3 Valve? As much as I enjoyed Portal, I would much prefer news of the next Half-Life!!

    • WiseHacker

      March 10, 2010 at 8:51 AM

      It would not surprise me if Episode Three has suffered the same fate as Duke Nukem Forever.

      Seriously, when I finished Episode Two I though the whole thing was a sick joke.

      Unless Valve comes out and explicitly says we will find out who the G-Man is in Episode Three, I’m going to be reluctant to buy a copy.

  • Hurshies

    March 9, 2010 at 7:14 AM

    Oh God finally, thank god for valve being the best developer out there

  • Scruffy

    March 9, 2010 at 8:12 AM

    Dear Valve,
    Please have my babies.

  • Darius

    March 9, 2010 at 8:27 AM

    im pumped.
    it used to be like; “macs? oh they are good, but not for gaming.”
    but with steam and a dedicated bunch like valve behind it all im very glad to be a mac user.

  • omygjaswitch

    March 9, 2010 at 10:21 AM

    oh god now the apple wankers are infiltrating my tf2 and l4d2! nowhere and nothing is safe!

    • Scruffy

      March 9, 2010 at 10:49 AM

      Hah, we’ve been infiltrating already through Crossover!
      That medic is a mac!

  • WiseHacker

    March 9, 2010 at 12:00 PM

    I’m curious as to how this will work.

    Is Valve going to port the games to the platform? The Source Engine (if I remember correctly) is mostly a DirectX based engine. Mac OSX has a different API (OpenGL).

    Then again, I’m a Windows user so my knowledge by have a few rust spots.

    • mambodog

      March 9, 2010 at 6:51 PM

      these days that stuff is usually all abstracted anyway, so its (more or less) just a matter of swapping out one set of wheels for another.

      And extra QA testing, obviously

  • Steven Bogos

    March 9, 2010 at 12:17 PM

    Will you have to re-buy the games for mac if you already own the windows versions?

  • Agro

    March 9, 2010 at 12:28 PM

    I, for one, welcome our new Mac gaming overlords.

  • PlasmaDavid

    March 9, 2010 at 2:38 PM

    INdeed, perhaps they shall spare Kotaku and use their journalistic skills to sway others to toil away in their vast underground gravelpits.

  • Foxbane

    March 9, 2010 at 2:58 PM

    Why would you give games to people who only follow fads seeing as thats what macs are
    Ohhhhh so shiny i must have it

  • Foxbane

    March 9, 2010 at 2:58 PM

    Like giving the Stig a maths book

  • Aaron

    March 9, 2010 at 3:56 PM

    I love mac haters, the hilarious underclass of rabid PC gamers. I love my Mac in all it’s shiny shinyness.

    Still waiting on a Torchlight port to Mac so i can play it without bootcamp.

  • Justin Robson

    March 9, 2010 at 5:25 PM

    Wow… I just got a massive boner for Gabe Newell, even though I was a bit angry at him for being a PS3 Nazi.

    I just hope they figure out a way to fix the acceleration curve in OS X, because that’s the only thing that stops me playing more Mac games.

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