Valve confirms Steam for Mac, debuts in April
By Donald Melanson 
posted March 8th 2010 2:44PM
posted March 8th 2010 2:44PM
Eager gamers have no doubt already seen the teasers, but Valve has now finally confirmed that its Steam game distribution service and Source engine will at long last be headed to the Mac. According to Valve, the company's current line-up of games (including the Half-Life and Left 4 Dead series) will be available to Mac users in April, while Portal 2 will represent the company's first simultaneous release for PC and Mac later this year. Better still, Steamworks for Mac also boasts a new feature called "Steam Play," which will let you buy a game once and, for instance, start playing it on a PC at work and then pick up where you left off on your Mac at home (we'll give you a moment to let that sink in). Game publishers will have to enable that feature themselves, but Valve says it expects most to take advantage of it.
Good god man, open the floodgates. Over this horizon the sky is red, meaning blood will ensue. A war of fanboys, wielding video cards and sharpened Macbooks for all to be one day consumed by the fiery hells of the flame war. Those who survive will tell their children of what they saw, that is..... if anyone survives.
@bazookafx3
Cue all apple faboys coming together in high falsetto to yet again proclaim their overwhelming superiority in a world full of unfortunate non-mac users.
I do, however, think this is pretty sweet.
@MoonWalkerCTE How is that trolling? All I'm saying is that this will fuel the fire of the flame wars. Satire my friend
@bazookafx3
The irony is that Moonwalker didn't really comprehend anything you wrote. Seems he just assumed some fanboy shit (rather than realizing it was making fun of the fanboy shit...) and called you a troll. Seriously, irony doesn't get any better, does it?
And I agree... the Apple vs EVERYONE ELSE fanboy shit is so old and gone on for so long... I read this news and now all I can think about is how many Macheads are going to swear games are better on their Macs. This is just a new battlefront for the Flame wars. :)
@bazookafx3 bring the mac fanboys. I look forward to eating their faces on l4d2
@nikoitaliano You're aware that not only fanboys use Apple's hardware, right?
Also, HOLY CRAP THAT'S STEAM 'N' SOURCE FOR OSX !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@bazookafx3
This first comment wins over all other first comments
(did you have this put aside somewhere for just such an occasion?)
@bazookafx3 I'm working on Pillage.app right now.
YES!!!
Portal, here we go!
-oh fuck, my graphics card sucks...thanks apple for the shitty GMA on my mac mini asshole!
Maybe I'll have to buy another expensive mac to replace my already expensive outdated mac mini.
@albinomexi
Who buys a mac mini for gaming.... Get a clue asshole
@bazookafx3
All this is so tiring. People are either being fanboys or being fanboys of fanboy behavior.
Just ignore the damn trolls, life is so much easier that way.
@Mack Stone
I've played mw1 on mac several times and while I think it's playable, how t f do u turn off that freaking mouse acceleration in snow leopard, not even 3rd party utils can do it now A check box in the preferences to turn it off too hard appla?
@bazookafx3
Has anyone noticed that the "PC turret" is upgradeable, but the "Mac Turret" can't be broken or sapped?
I'm totally gonna get downranked from both fanboys for this :P
@Neotyguy40 Ahahah Brilliant, Imma sappin ur turret!
@Mr Oos
Well, not quite. We already have the App Store with its 70,000 games.
The PC gaming market is cute and all, but, get real. The iPad is the next great platform.
@Mack Stone
Congratulations, you as a mac user has just won the ability to play even the most basic games...
your overpriced low quality machines are now semi useful :)
oh, P.S, good luck updating your Macs to play the better games :)
@albinomexi
Im sorry, you bought the mac mini mate, dont blame Apple.
You dont see people complaining they cant play crisis on their netbooks.. its a little something called target market.
@Mr Oos Why the fuck are you even commenting? Crawl back under your rock.
@Wesscoast
You're proud of the app store with the 70,000 games? How can you even compare the games found on Steam with the games found on the app store? It's like saying Champions Online is at same level as Fingerzilla. Yes, the app store is a huge success, but the vast majority of the games in the app store are cellphone-level games with fancy graphics. (aka CASUAL GAMES)
And how is the iPad the next platform? I can see it now. I'll be "screen-mashing" in Street Fighter 4 and getting pwned mercilessly in MW2. Don't even get me started with the horrendous in-game text chat.
Looks like you're the one who needs to get real :P
@bazookafx3 i like how the PC turret is upgradable and tough, and the Mac turret is shiny and whatnot but you just knock it over to beat it
@albinomexi
>Mac Mini
>Expensive
ITT Poor People
@HoldenMccrotch I agree
apples=thousands of dollars for crappy specs but they look good
PCs=thousands cheaper than mac for 3 times the power, but they don't look good
what would you rather have, something that works or something that looks good?
Yeah that's what i thought
@Hate Everything Im running a 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Macbook pro that would top your machine any day and I only paid four times as much. Do you have an apple the glows on the back of your computer I think not sir.
@bazookafx3
Good news is, this might force Apple to finally upgrade the macbookpro with game-worthy hardware, and maybe drive the price down
@cswright
I don't mean to 'feed the troll', but why did you take what I said and leveraged it towards one of the systems? Why do you need to be such a fanboy? That's the entire reason they temporarily banned the comments here in the first place!
I just want to know if the games I purchased on my PC will be downloadable on my mac. WTB update
@jetstream I notice you didn't comment at all on Software? You can have all the over-powered hardware in the world at rock bottom prices, but if the OS sucks, what good is it?
@jetstream That is a grossly exaggerated oversimplification of the difference between Macs and PCs.
@bazookafx3
It won't be fair if us Windows users are the only ones to experience the buggy crap that is Steam. Apple must take a bite of this too!
@nikoitaliano you forget that a lot of Mac "fanboys" are PC gamers too. PC for games, Mac for work (it gets shit done).
@jetstream do you realize that you need 4-8 times processing power on a pc to be as stable as mac osx (or linux)?
@bazookafx3This is the treat I'm waiting for with mac users, hopefully that 57 games will grow. Reactions. http://2su.de/Dhl
hope this holds true for the reverse, where if we bought games on steam pc we'll be able to re-download and play them on steam mac without paying again
@chill yea it should be the same from what I'm reading on other sites.
@chill I was thinking about the same exact thing. But if so, I will be a very happy zimpy
@chill This has been confirmed, no need to worry.
I wish IW would fix the hacking (F%$$$@$$K!!!!). Can't find a legit MW2 PC match without at least one hacker in it. :(
@chill This is awesome. The only thing I used my boot camp partition for was Visual Studio and gaming, and HL2 was the only game I really played. VMWare Fusion works well enough for VS, so I'll hardly ever have to reboot now.
Cool! I'm not a mac user but you just can't go wrong with more people playing TF2 :)
@Tsarbomb Can't Agree more
@Tsarbomb NEED A DISPENSER HERE!
@Tsarbomb
The picture is accurate. The PC is upgradeable.
@Tsarbomb
I'm wondering if TF2 PC players will be able to interact with Mac users though, cause TF2 on the PC runs on Direct3D I think. Although, I think there might be openGL of the source engine but I'm not sure if tf2 will run it or not.
@Tsarbomb
I agree. I hate Apple's advertising, and find a lot of the users to be incredibly smug and condescending. But the more people using mouse and keyboard to game, the better.
Also, this just might help Apple to take gaming on their OS seriously.
@ThomasBags The only data that is transmitted in a multiplayer game is that of where players are, where they are looking, where they are heading, if they are shooting, health, ammo, other stats etcetc... As long as all that data syncs fine between everyone it shouldnt matter what system they are on or what graphics engine they are using.
@kopmis I think he meant DirectPlay, witch is part of DirectX.
I.....I am lost for words.
This is the greatest Mac news in years!
@aMac
me too, really great after the rumours :)
@aMac Yup... finally REAL gaming coming to my macbook!
@aMac
Yup. By an absolute mile.
@aMac
Greatest news for mac gamers ever. No doubt. There's going to be stuff actually worth playing (to say the least), running natively on their machines.
My GMA 950 in the macbook won't be much help though!