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Valve's Steam and Portal 2 confirmed for Mac OS X
After a nerdgasmic 'leak' to the Mac news sites last week, in the way only Valve knows how, Steam and Portal's sequel have now been confirmed for Mac OS X.Steam is exciting enough, if only because it finally opens up cheap-and-quick indie development for the Mac, but throw in the inclusion of Portal and... well... this is big news and it poses some serious, market-altering questions.
First: Does this mean the Source engine has been gracefully ported to OpenGL? It must do -- Valve wouldn't do a half-assed emulation, I'm sure of it.
Which means... are the other first-party Valve games on their way? Team Fortress 2? Left 4 Dead? HALF LIFE 3? Will the PC and Mac equivalents be interoperable; will multi-player be available?
And for those of you that were wondering -- and a lot of commenters were asking the same question -- if you own the game on Steam, you own the game. The same license will work for both Windows and Mac. If you have 'switched', your games will be playable on both operating systems.
For anyone that missed the Portal 2 news, incidentally: it's going to be a full-sized 'feature' title, with multi-player cooperative missions... ... Sebastian bites down upon his knuckle.
Comments
12
Subscribe to commentskojo87Mar 8th 2010 1:58PM
sounds like the whole Source Engine is now Mac compatible. im guessing if you own the game on Steam you own it no matter what OS you want to play on.
Sebastian AnthonyMar 8th 2010 8:01PM
And if it's Mac-compatible, how close is that to Linux compatibility, hmm...
kojo87Mar 8th 2010 10:54PM
i've said it before and i'll say it again: if i could run Steam all my games natively in Linux, i would abandon Windows on the spot.
...then again i was running Vista last time i said that. Windows 7 makes things a little different.
HiApr 9th 2010 6:16PM
Does anyone know when it is coming out in April or if it is out yet.
krinakohlsMay 13th 2010 7:34AM
We're not on windows anymore... (lol) This sure is a sweet treat for mac users, hopefully the list of games will grow not to mention a price deduction on the premium games. Reactions. http://j.mp/steam-for-mac-released-review
David ChartierMar 8th 2010 2:01PM
Actually, it's official now. Valve issued a PR today with details of Steam, which games are coming, mentions of third parties, and the fact that you don't have to re-buy games across Mac or PC platforms. Your license works on both!
http://www.macworld.com/article/146951/2010/03/valve_steam.html
Sebastian AnthonyMar 8th 2010 8:01PM
That sounds awfully like what I said in my story... :P
David ChartierMar 8th 2010 11:27PM
Actually, TUAW linked a forum post (not always the most reliable of resources) of magazine scans (could easily be faked) from an unreleased issue. At the very least: it's dubious sourcing.
The Valve news I and others wrote was from an official PR straight from the company, which answered more questions such as which of Valve's other games will be ready at launch. It also gave an actual date for Steam's Mac arrival.
hazardMar 8th 2010 4:54PM
I don't know why Value is even bothering after you announced the
death of Mac gaming yesterday ;)
Sebastian AnthonyMar 8th 2010 8:01PM
Hey! For it to die it would have to actually be alive!
This is very, very good news for people that are forced into using Macs (or, perish the thought, use Macs out of _choice_...), but it's a far cry from the Mac becoming a gaming platform like Windows/PC!
ShaneMar 8th 2010 8:35PM
Good to see Apple keeping pace with the gaming trends of 2003.
David ChartierMar 8th 2010 11:33PM
For what it's worth, Apple doesn't have much of anything to do with this. In fact, one of Valve's co-founders famously complained in 2007 that Apple doesn't seem to care much about gaming on the Mac, and not much seems to have changed since then.
Also: Left 4 Dead 2—released Nov 2009—will arrive at launch next month, and Valve developed Portal 2 simultaneously for Mac and PC.
This is all the doing of Valve and any other 3rd parties that decide to develop for the Mac, and it should be good news for everyone. More people buying games means more and better games.