Valve brings Steam to Mac

Mac users rejoice! As expected, Valve has today confirmed that its Steam game distribution service and Source engine is finally heading to Apple’s Macintosh platform early next month.

Mac users rejoice! As expected, Valve has today confirmed that its Steam game distribution service and Source engine is finally heading to Apple’s Macintosh platform early next month. Valve’s library of games will include Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series. According to Jason Holtman, Director of Business Development at Valve:

Our Steam partners, who are delivering over a thousand games to 25 million Steam clients, are very excited about adding support for 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. 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.

Josh Weier, Portal 2 Project Lead, has also confirmed that the next installment of Portal will be released on the Mac and PC simultaneously this winter:

Checking in code produces a PC build and Mac build at the same time, automatically, so the two platforms are perfectly in lock-step. 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.

Via [Steam]