Valve’s uberpopular Steam game distribution and library system is coming to the Mac, along with the much ballyhooed Portal 2. The system will allow you to play the PC or Mac version of any Steam game you own.
It’s difficult to overstate how significant this is for gaming:
Valve has stopped with the teasing and has officially announced that its online gaming service Steam is coming to the Mac. As a bonus, the company also plans to make the Mac a “tier-1” platform, promising simultaneous release of games on Mac OS X, Windows, and Xbox 360.
Valve has developed a Mac-native version of its Source engine, using the cross-platform OpenGL. “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,” John Cook, Director of Steam Development, said in a statement. “The inclusion of WebKit into Steam, and of OpenGL into Source gives us a lot of flexibility in how we move these technologies forward.”
Beginning in April, Mac users will be able to access games via Steam, including Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series. The Mac Steam client is based on the latest version for Windows that is currently in beta, which is where the first hints of Mac OS X compatibility were discovered.
Huge. Huge. Huge.
Gee, and only a couple of decades late! Not that Windows machines haven’t consistently fucked me on getting games to run–Vista required a new graphics card and is still hinky–but at least I’ve been able to play Left 4 Dead 2 since it came out. Of course, this may erase my resistance to my wife’s desire to replace our PC with a Mac.
If you have a Vista machine still, RUN, do not walk, and get Win7. It’s a huge boon, seriously. Vista’s a dog.