Valve bring your favourite Source games to Apple computers.
Following on from last week's rumour about Steam being ported to Apple's Mac operating system, we've finally received a confirmation from Valve - Steam is coming to the Mac.
As described in a news post on their site, Valve is very dedicated to bringing not only Steam to Apple's computers, but also every current Source-based game!
On top of existing games working on Steam for Mac, games currently in development have a new lease of life all over again:
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.
For those who fear that the simultaneous release of Valve's games on the Mac platform will slow down releases on the PC side of things, it seems that it isn't the case at all.
Checking [code] produces a PC build and Mac build at the same time, automatically, so the two platforms are perfectly in lock-step
To wrap it all up with a neat little bow, you'll be able to play your currently purchased Steam games on either your Windows PC or on your Apple Mac without springing for a new copy of the games; and progress will be transferred as well.
Half Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Portal, Left 4 Dead 2 and many more Source games will be playable straight out of the gates, with Portal 2 set to release at the exact same time for both platforms.
With this expansion to a new platform and an opening of a whole new market, this can only mean good things for gamers - and hopefully we'll see even more games coming through the pipeline.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012