Valve announces Steam for Mac, will allow Mac-PC online play

Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
Valve officially revealed Monday that its Steam online gaming service, along with the Source engine that powers titles such as Half-Life 2 and Left 4 Dead 2, is coming to the Mac in April.



Valve's library of games will be making the jump from Windows Machines, including Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series.



"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."



Jason Holtman, director of business development at Valve, said the partners who sell games through the Steam online service, are "very excited" about embracing the Mac platform. The statement would imply that developers other than Valve intend to make their titles compatible with the Mac.



"Steamworks for the Mac supports all of the Steamworks APIs, and we have added a new feature, called Steam Play, which allows customers who purchase the product for the Mac or Windows to play on the other platform free of charge," Holtman said. "For example, Steam Play, in combination with the Steam Cloud, allows a gamer playing on their work PC to go home and pick up playing the same game at the same point on their home Mac. We expect most developers and publishers to take advantage of Steam Play."



In addition, Valve confirmed that the forthcoming Portal 2 game will be the company's first simultaneous release for both Mac and Windows.



"Checking in code produces a PC build and Mac build at the same time, automatically, so the two platforms are perfectly in lock-step," said Josh Weier, project lead for Portal 2. "We're always playing a native version on the Mac right alongside the PC. This makes it very easy for us and for anyone using Source to do game development for the Mac."



"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.



"Updates for the Mac will be available simultaneously with the Windows updates. Furthermore, Mac and Windows players will be part of the same multiplayer universe, sharing servers, lobbies, and so forth. We fully support a heterogeneous mix of servers and clients. The first Mac Steam client will be the new generation currently in beta testing on Windows."
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 37
    superbasssuperbass Posts: 688member
    Great! Now we can play all those 2-year old steam games that actually run on our brand new Macbook Pros and iMacs with Core2Duos.
  • Reply 2 of 37
    saareksaarek Posts: 1,520member
    I hope news games like Empire Total War etc come out eventually too!
  • Reply 3 of 37
    azazel-azazel- Posts: 68member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Superbass View Post


    Great! Now we can play all those 2-year old steam games that actually run on our brand new Macbook Pros and iMacs with Core2Duos.



    Yes, because everyone knows i5 and i7 processors and bleeding-edge GPUs are absolutely mandatory for most games today.



    Moron.
  • Reply 4 of 37
    freddychfreddych Posts: 266member
    you have to admit, macbooks have piss-poor 3-d gaming performance.
  • Reply 5 of 37
    sandausandau Posts: 1,230member
    This will be great...no more boot camp for CS. I'm not sure if this means I'll have to buy the games again though...hope not!
  • Reply 6 of 37
    azazel-azazel- Posts: 68member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by freddych View Post


    you have to admit, macbooks have piss-poor 3-d gaming performance.



    You have to admit, that most people don't buy notebooks for hardcore gaming, and the GPUs in the MB/MBP is pretty middle-of-the-road for whats on the market right now. If you try to play Crysis on any laptop, you deserve what you get.



    I'm starting to get sick of every goddamn thread I read on this site and MacRumors having the topic devolve into a discussion about the supposed 'outdated' hardware in the macbooks. It's getting old. Anyone have any suggestions on forums where people actually talk about the topic at hand instead of having to deal with Wintendo fanboys whining about stupid crap?
  • Reply 7 of 37
    sandausandau Posts: 1,230member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by azazel- View Post


    Yes, because everyone knows i5 and i7 processors and bleeding-edge GPUs are absolutely mandatory for most games today.



    Moron.



    well, getting 400fps in the HalfLife 2 test is pretty sweet on a new iMac i5. Sure beats the 40fps on the 2 year old machine.
  • Reply 8 of 37
    richlrichl Posts: 2,213member
    The Source engine scales pretty well. Playing Valve's games at a decent frame-rate should be possible on the late 2007 Macbook and upwards.
  • Reply 9 of 37
    There are a number of older games that are sold cheap. Old Lucasarts games for instance. I'd love to play Tie-Fighter again and it's supposed to be coming out.



    Would these be PC only?
  • Reply 10 of 37
    eyce9000eyce9000 Posts: 13member
    I wish this had come a long time ago, but better late than never. I needed to replace my powerbook and it looks like I can get a replacement without having to put windows on it. I have had to rely on my massive pc tower to play any games, but now I will only have to fire it up occasionally.



    Valve games really are some of the best games out there and the fact that I won't have to re-buy them is absolutely fantastic (since I already own them all). Even better is that HL2 runs on even the most moderate system so I bet those nvidia 9400s in the macbooks will be able to handle most of those games at reduced settings.
  • Reply 11 of 37
    cbswecbswe Posts: 116member
    AWESOME! This is a great step forward for mac gaming.

    Now all three, in my opinion, best game companies produces games for the mac.

    The other two great ones are id Software and Blizzard Entertainment.
  • Reply 12 of 37
    cdyatescdyates Posts: 202member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Cbswe View Post


    AWESOME! This is a great step forward for mac gaming.

    Now all three, in my opinion, best game companies produces games for the mac.

    The other two great ones are id Software and Blizzard Entertainment.



    Add Epic to that list and we're all good. Unreal engine is used in a lot of good shooters.
  • Reply 13 of 37
    cdyatescdyates Posts: 202member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by azazel- View Post


    Yes, because everyone knows i5 and i7 processors and bleeding-edge GPUs are absolutely mandatory for most games today.



    Moron.



    Moron? Ease up killer. Fast processors and GPUs certainly help...
  • Reply 14 of 37
    omg! if they have audiosurf and they have itunes integration which works with the DRM then i'm going to be as happy as ever!!
  • Reply 15 of 37
    rcarltonrcarlton Posts: 35member
    this is great news - well done valve and apple!



    (i've always wondered if apple would see to spend some of their billions to acquire valve... it made sense from a distribution perspective before - and now from a content perspective too.)
  • Reply 16 of 37
    lukeskymaclukeskymac Posts: 506member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by saarek View Post


    I hope news games like Empire Total War etc come out eventually too!



    I pre-ordered Empire after becoming a Rome addict. BIGGEST. MISTAKE. EVER. CA shafted all of its fanbase with this broken game, and things only got worse when they dropped ETW support and announced that 60% of the ETW promised features that never came to be would be on Napoleon: for $50 more.



    I don't really know what to think of Steam (the thing has given me some head aches), but as long as this means more NATIVE Mac games, horaay!



    Hopefully this means one day I won't need a Windows partition to play games anymore...
  • Reply 17 of 37
    hill60hill60 Posts: 6,992member
    Yes, because hardly anyone plays Counter Strike Source any more or any of the online FPS games that evolved from Half Life.



    The servers are empty...



    ...NOT!



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Superbass View Post


    Great! Now we can play all those 2-year old steam games that actually run on our brand new Macbook Pros and iMacs with Core2Duos.



  • Reply 18 of 37
    hill60hill60 Posts: 6,992member
    But aren't necessary and put you on a treadmill of upgrades that make the cost of Macs pale into insignificance.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by cdyates View Post


    Moron? Ease up killer. Fast processors and GPUs certainly help...



  • Reply 19 of 37
    What did I say the other day? I said I had a feeling Valve was not going to use a WINE like abstraction layer.... they say.. and I quote: "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" and "We're always playing a native version on the Mac right alongside the PC. This makes it very easy for us and for anyone using Source to do game development for the Mac." They also say they ported the engine to OpenGL.... my far fetched idea wasn't so far fetched after all.
  • Reply 20 of 37
    cdyatescdyates Posts: 202member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by hill60 View Post


    But aren't necessary and put you on a treadmill of upgrades that make the cost of Macs pale into insignificance.



    Not even close. The "upgrade costs are more than the apple premium" argument is specious. You could buy multiple video card upgrades in the 3 years or so you use the box and still be well under the cost of an iMac that was similarly equipped to start with and cannot be upgraded in any meaningful way to keep up.
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