Steam Officially Coming to OS X

By Ian Bell March 8, 2010

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.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Publisher

I work with the best people in the world and get paid to play with gadgets. What's not to like?

Computing

The biggest threat to the MacBook this year might come from Apple itself

The MacBook Air on a white table.

MacBooks have held a dominant position in the laptop world for the past few years. Though there have been meaningful rivals from the Windows side of the aisle, the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro still feel like they hold an unshakeable lead at the moment.

But according to the latest reports, the most serious challenger to the MacBook's reign won't come from Windows -- it'll come from within Apple in the form of some very advanced new iPads.
What's a computer?

Computing

How to customize controls on the Steam Deck

A suite of retro games in the Steam Deck library.

Your Steam Deck is the beating heart of your everyday gameplay. It’s fast, powerful, and is packed with features and customizations. Regarding the latter, did you know that you’re actually able to customize your Steam Deck’s controls? Doing so isn’t overly difficult, but a little know-how goes a long way.

To that end, we’ve put together this guide to teach you how to re-map and re-tool your Steam Deck controls as quickly and easily as possible.

Computing

How Vision Pro tech could come to the Mac

The Mac Studio and Studio Display at Apple's Peek Performance event.

You're probably familiar with the Apple Vision Pro, which uses spatial computing technology to bring content alive in the world around you. Virtual reality headsets and 3D displays exist to make games and other content feel more immersive. Apple, however, wants to be the best of the best and is looking into bringing spatial computing experiences to computer monitors, presumably to run your Mac.

A patent for "Displays with Selective Pixel Brightness tuning" was published on April 4, showing the company's interest in the technology. Much of it involves using a lenticular display and a lenticular lens film so that a viewer can see what looks like three-dimensional images without wearing a headset.