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Valve to Bring Steam to Mac Platform

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We don't often post Mac-centric news (being primarily a Windows PC-based site and all), but every once in awhile, we can't help ourselves. This happens to be one of those times.

Valve yesterday announced plans to bring Steam, its gaming service, and Source, Valve's gaming engine, to the Mac platform.

"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."

Valve said its library of games, including Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series, will all be available next month, though the company didn't specify an exact date. And these won't be run through emulation, but natively.

"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."

In addition, Cook said that Mac and Windows players will be part of the same multiplayer universe, so it will be entirely possible to settle the debate between PC vs Mac in head-to-head matchups.

Image Credit: levelselect.co.uk

54 comments
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avatarJenny

Nice Post!

 

Regards

jenny

radiesse

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avatarNice, and you don't need to

Nice, and you don't need to pay again for it.

 

 

 

Macintosh+Windows user.

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avatarFPS game challenge : Windows vs Mac users

FPS game challenge : window's gamers vs mac graphic design artist 

announcement: this is team deathmatch. get ready..

windows team : go go go soldier

mac team : oh shoot ! I can't find my lipsticks and nail polisher ! 

 

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avatarvs

Windows team: Headshot!

Mac team: Doesn't the new skin I designed look cool?

 Ha ha...

Seriously though, this will get more people playing games on their computers. I'm personally all for it. I wonder when we'll se an Apple console?

 

"Sheesh, It's just one man's opinion..."   -Me

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avatar already happened back in

 already happened back in 1994

 

-= I don't want to be dead, I want to be alive! Or... a cowboy! =-

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avatarPippin?

If you're talking about the Pippin, I think it was branded more as a computer for your tv that plays video games. I didn't own one so that's just an assumption on my part. How about if I revise my comment to "I wonder if Apple will release a competitive console?".

 

 

"Sheesh, It's just one man's opinion..."   -Me

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avatar Thats the name of the

 Thats the name of the device! I couldn't remember

When you think about it though, a video game console, is a speciality computer designed to play video games on your TV, so maybe the Pippin wasn't TOO far off...

 

-= I don't want to be dead, I want to be alive! Or... a cowboy! =-

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avatarName Fail

I think it was doomed just based on the name... lol.

 

"Sheesh, It's just one man's opinion..."   -Me

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avataryeah Frodo would have been

yeah Frodo would have been more effective 

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avatarHappy

Im very happy for Mac owners finally getting some real gaming support. This should open up a whole new world of gaming for them to take advantage of. What Im really happy about is not having to watch Apple owners pretend they are not missing out anymore. WHAT??? Its painfull watching them rationalize crippled machines they paid a premium for!

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avatarLOL This is true, compared

LOL

This is true, compared to the new mac users I'll be pretty good at online fps games :D  

Mac User: How do I throw a grenade???

Windows User: Hit the right mouse button!  

Mac User:  What right mouse button?!  

Windows User: *aims and clicks right mouse button*

"Life is about living, not stressing" - a very smart girl :)

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avatarWasnt a fan of mac, but I

Wasnt a fan of mac, but I think it was a great idea to finally move to the mac platform.

 

"In addition, Cook said that Mac and Windows players will be part of the
same multiplayer universe, so it will be entirely possible to settle the
debate between PC vs Mac in head-to-head matchups."

 This will be fun!

 

 

After Mac can we then work on Linux? If Steam goes to Linux with great support, I will have no reason to stay on Windows.  (I dont wish to use Cadega on Linux for now)

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avatarGood news for me!

This means I won't be the worst player whenver I log into TF2 anymore...

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avatarDOS

so much for valve for windows / mac / linux... 

valve should also support DOS platform :)  i wonder if some evil genius will revive DOS and make it run in 64 bit !

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avatarAnd then all you would be

And then all you would be able to play is Gang Garrison 2. 

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avatarLinux Soon?

According to the Valve announcement they are able to port it to the Mac natively because they now (can) use WebKit and OpenGL, which are also available on Linux. Port to Linux pl0x

Edit: And as for distro incompatibility, they could use a binary like Uplink or NVidia does (maybe a self extracting .sh?).

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avatarCool

I hate macs (they're for doodoo heads) but I love steam (half-life 2 saved my life... before L4D destroyed it). even though I am an avid pc user, I do think this is a good move for valve because it allows them to compete with "games for windows" more aggressively as a service. I hate games for windows because I'ts just xbox live doing a really crappy imitation of steam. I don't have to tell you guys that Valve several orders of magnitude less evil than microsoft and therefore less likely to try to exploit you. I would love nothing more than seeing games for windows eradicated from this plane of existence (I've had some bad experiences) but this represents an opportunity for steam to expand into a market that microsoft can't enter. This could make valve tons of money which they would hopefully use to
make more/better games. And if it's anything to allay the fears of other pc gamers, I'm certain Steam for mac won't start a gaming exodus from pc, while there is money to be made on mac, PC still has still has more gamers and an established market and no one is going to abandon that!

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avatarFake. Mactards don't game.

Fake. Mactards don't game. They left the PC platform because with a Mac, you can be much more "productive".

Now that the "lack of gaming" feature has been removed, does this make the Mac more shitty? (The answer is yes)

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avatarThis could be good for PC

This could be good for PC gaming.  An expanded player base will make the platform seem all the more appetizing to publishers and developers alike.

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avatarHow does Steam on Macs

How does Steam on Macs expand the player base of PC gaming? If game developers wanted to make games for Macs they could have been doing so without Steam.

Mac is a different platform from Windows, just like Xbox 360 is a different platform from Windows. The reason some games are console only or made into crappy delayed PC ports is because there are more sales from consoles. Why would developers even bother with the small Mac sales potential when they barely care about Windows these days.

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avatarAKSHUALLY...

 The XBox 360 and MS Windows have a lot more in common than you think. A slightly better comparison would have been 360 to PS3.

 

-= I don't want to be dead, I want to be alive! Or... a cowboy! =-

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avatarGPU problem...

Aside from the obvious right-click issue, what about GPUs? Very few Macs come with any sort of real GPU, and those that do are usually using last-gen parts. 640x480 anyone?

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avatar i don't know if that is

 i don't know if that is true, i'm on a Mac right now (with a logitech mouse) i have right click and scroll wheel, even the mighty mouse can right click, they just hid it inside a unibody but the function IS there.

 

And looking at apple.com the top tier card in their own Tower

http://store.apple.com/us_smb_78313/configure/MB871LL/A?mco=MTM3NDc3ODQ

is a ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB, not to shabby 

 

------------------------------
Coming soon to Lulu.com --Tokusatsu Heroes--
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avatarThat is not very good

That is not very good considering that is TOP tier.

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avatar but the only thing higher

 but the only thing higher (as i understand it) is the JUST RELEASED 58xxs. Seems to me then that having the Current Leading edge is pretty competitive.

------------------------------
Coming soon to Lulu.com --Tokusatsu Heroes--
Five teenagers, one alien ghost, a robot, and the fate of the world.

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avatarThere is such thing as a GTX

There is such thing as a GTX 285 for Mac. It's an EVGA card, and is ungodly expensive (up here its ~$530 CAD, or $100 more than my 5870). If you so prefer, you can get a $3000 (CAD) Quadro FX 4800, from PNY.

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avatar Oh i never said

 Oh i never said they weren't hideously over priced but the idea their is no right mouse or curent gen GPU's for Apple is a fallacy i wanted to correct.

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avatarBut the 4870 isn't the best

But the 4870 isn't the best of the best for Apple. That's what I was trying to say. 

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avatarFrom what my brother's told

From what my brother's told me (he has a Mac for his film and television course in school), he's had to find and flash a special "apple" firmware on to the video card for them to work properly in his Mac (I don't remember what it is. It's a giant tower, dual Xeon, yadda yadda yadda)

 

-= I don't want to be dead, I want to be alive! Or... a cowboy! =-

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avatar*Sniff sniff*

I smell a mac fanboy.

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avatar rriigghhtt...   -= I

 rriigghhtt...

 

-= I don't want to be dead, I want to be alive! Or... a cowboy! =-

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avatarSo does this mean Macboys

So does this mean Macboys will be able to say, "Mac's can game too, so STFU"?

Well, no fault of Valve's I guess. Though, I have to question whether or not this decision is economically-sound. Seems to me that such a small market can't be that profitable for so much work put into making it adaptable.

Has Steve Jobs approved of this?

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avatarApple Tax

Valve has to ammortize the porting costs, and will probably add a little to the cost of all their games. Which would make it another Apple Tax on stuff not made by Apple! That Jobs is taxing worse than King George and the tea tax!

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avatarFinancially, you're right.

Financially, you're right. In fact, Valve is setting it up so that if you've purchased a specific Valve produced game on the PC Steam, you get it automatically on the Mac Steam(and vic-versa). Now, this is good for consumers. Why buy 2 copies of TF2, or L4D just to play on your Mac instead of booting in to Win7 via Bootcamp.

 But with the small group of "Mac Gamers", I don't really see this to be much of an issue.

I wonder how L4D, Portal, TF2, or Half-Life series will work with that single button mouse, or the "Gesture mouse" or w/e it was called... (yes, I know that they have the "mighty mouse" and you can use a real PC mouse on a Mac)

-= I don't want to be dead, I want to be alive! Or... a cowboy! =-

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avatargood point, Valve could go

good point, Valve could go to al lthe troube just of Steve to say that steam is a unapproved app ;) 

------------------------------
Coming soon to Lulu.com --Tokusatsu Heroes--
Five teenagers, one alien ghost, a robot, and the fate of the world.

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avatarThat would be quite

That would be quite funny!

 

-= I don't want to be dead, I want to be alive! Or... a cowboy! =-

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avatar and i'm not talking just

 and i'm not talking just about the iMaxiPad, i have a Pro Tower and now i can't even run non iPods to sync with iTunes. They could do the same with steam making only first part Apple games *snort* run on it

------------------------------
Coming soon to Lulu.com --Tokusatsu Heroes--
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avatar iMovie and iLife aren't

 iMovie and iLife aren't games though... So... there'd be nothing for them to sell!

 

-= I don't want to be dead, I want to be alive! Or... a cowboy! =-

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avatarwell

99% of the Steam catalog still won't work on a mac.

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avatarThis isn't a bad idea

This isn't a bad idea really. Wrld of Warcraft has tons of Mac users. One concern I see with this is if someone buys a non Valve game, will it work? Also, older valve games on Mac? And even their newer ones, are they going to need 2 versions?

 I can run Steam in Linux just fine, however I do think they should do Linux next. I don't see it happening soon because they need to make one for all different distribution bases.

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avatar From what I read on Kotaku

 From what I read on Kotaku and here, it's JUST the Valve produced games. So, as someone else pointed out, 99% of the library won't work. But that won't stop all the Mactards from gloating that "th3y t00 kan play TF2! n00b".

But, with increased focus on gaming, comes increased adoption, and as we all know how insecure and full of holes MacOS X is, comes increased exploitation! And once that happens, the world will know how truely crappy an OS MacOS X is!

 

-= I don't want to be dead, I want to be alive! Or... a cowboy! =-

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avatarEpic

 Fail

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avatarMac...

Why not linux?

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avatarLinux

They could go for the most popular version of linux OR make their own distro

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avatarYes, in order to play about

Yes, in order to play about 10 or so games you need to wipe Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora/Gentoo/etc. and install Valve OS. </sarcasm>

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avatar not Valve OS...Steam

 not Valve OS...Steam EXtended 

Take a minute to get the joke.... 

 

------------------------------
Coming soon to Lulu.com --Tokusatsu Heroes--
Five teenagers, one alien ghost, a robot, and the fate of the world.

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avatar cause their is 40 billion

 cause their is 40 billion Linux Distros? They may have the same base but you first got to figure out that base in a way it works with Distor 48112 - 56907 without breaking distro 49631 and 53302.

 

and that doesn't even take into account the other 39,890 distros. 

------------------------------
Coming soon to Lulu.com --Tokusatsu Heroes--
Five teenagers, one alien ghost, a robot, and the fate of the world.

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avatarwhy?

 for the same reason it's just as retarded to do so on a Mac

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