On subsequent Wednesdays, additional collections of Mac titles will become available, each designed to highlight specific functionalities of Steam on the Mac.
The first collection of Mac titles will demonstrate “Steam Play,” which allows customers to purchase a game once and play it on all Steam supported platforms. Gamers who have previously purchased games on Steam will find them available in their account on the Mac as they are released.
Portal, in addition to supporting Steam Play, will be the first of Valve’s Source engine based games available on the Mac. Native Mac OS X support for the Source engine is also available immediately to licensees for use in their games.
Among the initial titles available on Wednesday will be Runic Games’ critically acclaimed Torchlight “We’re very excited to be bringing Torchlight to the Mac,” said Max Schaefer, co-founder of Runic Games, in the press release. “Having Steam for the Mac solves so many problems for us as a developer. We look forward to our future games coming out on the Mac as well.”
In addition to bringing the online functionality of Steam to the Mac, Valve will also make its Steamworks suite of publishing and development tools available on the Mac platform. These include product key authentication, copy protection, auto-updating, social networking, matchmaking, anti-cheat technology, and more. The features and services available in Steamworks are offered free of charge and may be used for both electronic and tangible versions of games.
More information on Steam here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Leigh R.” for the heads up.]
I got a fever, and the prescription is more crowbar.
Torchlight is a wonderful little game and it’s such a great thing they will be making it available on launch tomorrow.
Even if you’re not a heavy gamer, support the Mac platform by supporting Steam and it’s efforts to bring titles to the Mac platform. At least download the client, and if possible buy 1 or 2 Mac titles as they are made available.
does the white macbook have enough punch to play the steam games?
With all due respect to the significance of having Steam on OS X….Why can’t we get Modern Warfare 2 or some other game from 2010?
just my $0.02
@Apelock
Like it!
Sadly, I bet relatively few Mac user are gamers. You just don’t buy Macs for games. Consequently I don’t know how well Steam is going to do. I bet very few Mac users are even aware of Steam coming to the Mac or even know what Steam is.
I for one, have no idea what Steam is or does. I have one game on my iPod touch but I’ve only tried the demo twice. Not much of a gamer, huh?
Valve has done a bang-up job with this by not only building Mac-specific versions of the Source engine and Steam, but also bringing on third party developers. I’m not sure how long this has been in the works, but I applaud them for their efforts.
Don’t underestimate the desire for mac games. A lot of mac users maintain bootcamp for this, or just plain gave up because they hate Windows so much. Make the titles available, and the gamers will come. But they have to be current releases; don’t depend on Aspyr to release a port 2 years later. Kudos to Valve for making it easier for developers!
I had read that Team Fortress 2 would be coming on Wed as well; hope so!
@TheloniousMac — To be more accurate, fewer Mac users are computer gamers. Mac users play games just as much as anyone else — we just use a console to do it. It’s due to a combination of our computers not supporting as many games over the years, and our preference for buying tools that are optimized for their particular purpose. Mac for computing, console for gaming, iPod for music, etc.
——RM
@ TheloniousMac
I think mac users are gamers too, they just have a higher standard of game quality
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” /> I used to love dark castle on my mac plus back in the day…. and the steam store makes it as easy as Apple’s app store to buy, download, and install games.
Now I’ve got a quad core mac pro, 2.66 with 7GB RAM, and a Radeon 4870. Main use for it is to play left4dead 2, which is made by valve. sadly it’s almost always booted into windows 7 so i can play my game. It will be a beautiful day when I can run it in snow leopard full time and still play L4D2.
(BTW, I highly recommend it! very fun game!)
This gamer is thrilled to death at the idea of gaming on his Mac.
If you are a gamer or not remember this:
other than gaming is there ANY reason for a consumers to buy a PC?
I’m similar to Zaphod, I bootcamp into Windows XP Pro for gaming. I play Guild Wars and Railworks mostly. Both are available for purchase on Steam and yes I do use Steam and so have an account with Valve/Steam. Not having to re-purchase titles is a major boon as well.
Valve may change the gaming scene and I will be holding off getting Windows 7 to see what happens and should Valve make it possible for new top releases in OSX, natively alongside Windows, I won’t bother with Windows at all and turn its HD, not a partition btw, over to another use, perhaps Time Machine.
As Zaphod wrote it will be a beautiful day. Beautiful when I too can still buy major gaming titles as they hit shelves and not feel left out or perhaps ‘left4dead’. Or just as bad wait 2 years or in vain for a port.
The only challenge I can see, which is where Steamworks suite comes in, is to get ALL the major game publishers on board ensuring their titles reach a wider consumer base.
Question: Will people playing these games on their Mac be able to play in the same game as those playing on a Windows machine? I have found that to be extremely fun, being an old D&Der;. My friends from out of state and I play Neverwinter Nights and Diablo II together, but there isn’t much else out that that’s cross-platform.
Apple wants to court the casual gamer – not the hardcore gamer. A million sales is better than 10,000.
Just wait until games are sold through Apple TV.
The pressure is on. No more vaporware.
“Sadly, I bet relatively few Mac user are gamers.”
Sadly, I’ll bet a few bigots are idiots with just a hunch and nothing else.
You know your culture from your trash
You know your plastic from your cash
When I lose sight of the track
You know the way back
But I know you
You know your stripper from your paint
You know your sinner from your saint
Whenever heaven’s doors are shut
You kick them open but
I know you
Give me steam
And how you feel to make it real
Real as any place you’ve been
Get a life with the dreamer’s dream
I think TheloniousFullOfSelf should start profiling all Mac users. What a useless resource that would be.
“Question: Will people playing these games on their Mac be able to play in the same game as those playing on a Windows machine? I have found that to be extremely fun, being an old D&Der;. My friends from out of state and I play Neverwinter Nights and Diablo II together, but there isn’t much else out that that’s cross-platform”
I believe I read somewhere that it online play be will be cross-platform for macs and PC’s, which is great for playing online as there will already be an established community form day one.
What else will be great about having steam for mac will be the available map/game mods that come with a pc game. I have been a mac user and a gamer for a long time, but only through consoles. Console gaming’s biggest drawback is that there is no great way to play modded maps, leaving games like the Team Fortress 2 port for PS3 with a scanty 5 maps to play.
I don’t have the time to play games as I did a few years ago but I went to their website and frankly I only got half way through their action collection and I was quite impressed. I won’t be buying a lot of their games but there a couple which really caught my attention. Also, it’s another selling point to convert windows’ users over to macs
Don’t buy games on Steam… It’s a Wall garded DRM heaven.