Valve Brings Steam to Mac, along with lots of games

Valve have certainly stirred up something big here. On Friday they took the liberty of not only officially unveiling Portal 2, but they also launched a mad online marketing campaign seemingly with the sole intention of blowing the minds of fans. Various Mac/gaming websites received strange images from Valve, all of which hinted that PC digital distribution system Steam will become available on Mac OS X quite soon.

Six images were sent separately to Mac Rumors, Mac NN, Shacknews, Eurogamer, Rock, Paper, Shotgun, and Macworld, all of which joined famous Apple ads for the iPhone and Mac with some of Valve’s most renowned characters, including Gordon Freeman from the Half-Life series. As you can see in the image at the top, which is one of six, there is an Apple logo concealed behind Gordon’s crowbar. Valve didn’t issue any official statement to explain these images, instead the company only said, “In anticipation of an upcoming announcement from Valve.”

The announcement, however, came today, that Steam for Mac will in fact be launching and will come with a number of popular Valve titles. On the list of games are Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series. The Steam system will feature all of the PC versions bells and whistles as well as a new Steam Play feature. What Steam Play does is that it allows those who have already downloaded PC versions of games to re-download those games for Mac with no additional cost.

“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,” Valve’s Jason Holtman said in an official statement. “We expect most developers and publishers to take advantage of Steam Play.”

From this point on, Valve will be releasing all of its titles on PC, Mac and Xbox360. If the current speculated release date for Portal 2 is correct, October 26th, then it will be the first game by Valve to appear on all three platforms simultaneously.

[Source: GameSpy]