The rumors and teasers surrounding a Steam release for OS X have been swirling for the past few weeks. Today, however, Valve made the official announcement that Steam and the Source engine are coming to Macs. Starting in April, games like Left 4 Dead 2 and Team Fortress 2 will be available for gamers of the Mac persuasion.
“As we transition from entertainment as a product to entertainment as a service, customers and developers need open, high-quality Internet clients,” explained Gabe Newell, President of Valve. “The Mac is a great platform for entertainment services.”
“Our Steam partners, who are delivering over a thousand games to 25 million Steam clients, are very excited about adding support for the Mac,” added Jason Holtman, Valve’s Director of Business Development.
An interesting development out of the announcement is that a new feature called Steam Play will allow gamers to purchase one copy of a game and play it on either a Mac or a PC. In addition, it would allow a gamer to play a game like Half-Life 2 on his or her home PC, then visit a friend who has a Mac and pick up in the game for where he or she left off.
Valve also announced that Portal 2 will be simultaneously released on the PC and Mac platforms. “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,” said Portal 2 Project Lead Josh Weier.
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