The All New Gabriel Newell's Digital Wonder Emporium, aka, The Steam Update Thread

Anyone else see this? RPS suggests Steam on Mac.

Atras wrote:

Anyone else see this? RPS suggests Steam on Mac.

Shacknews also has a bit of info and a couple of pics;

IMAGE(http://www.shacknews.com/images/image-o-matic.x?/images/sshots/Screenshot/14017/14017_4b8ec5e8472c7.jpg)
IMAGE(http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/10/feb/steamtease2.jpg)

Oh yes. To borrow from Lara Crigger: Steam for Macs, Female Doggoes.

Not just steam, the source engine too. IIRC that's the only (native?) current big name game engine on OSX (until Rage comes along?). If they could 'seed' OSX steam by allowing current PC users who have valve titles to use the licence on both platforms, that would be a nice move.Hopefully all different PC/mac clients are compatible, and will be patched in sync (it should be, the game code is separated from client code).

The big question for me would be mods, and access to the SDK/SDK base. Currently code is compiled to win32 x86 native, so either no mods on OSX (I hope not), mods need to have another mac compilation included (and packaged in a mac friendly way, no .exe installers) or they interpret the windows compiled version.

It'll be interesting to see just how many games appear on the Mac version of Steam. Still, given Steam's ubiquity, I wonder if this will mean more Indy developers will see the Mac as a solid alternative platform for their wares.

I wonder if valve are doing this of their own volition, or if Apple will introduce any gaming oriented macs the next time they launch some products, with steam bundled like alienware PCs.

From what I understand, Valve has been working on some very ambitious stuff for Mac. I don't know how much they are ready to reveal, but they've had their eye on that platform for a long time.

Podunk wrote:

From what I understand, Valve has been working on some very ambitious stuff for Mac. I don't know how much they are ready to reveal, but they've had their eye on that platform for a long time.

Indeed. Some of the upcoming applications include:

iCompare -- Prius Edition
iSearch -- Bands Your Friends Haven't Heard Of
iTalk -- Automated Messaging about Stuff You Did With Your iPhone to Twitter, Facebook, and your local Coffee Shop.
iShop -- Online shopping at Whole Foods for all your Granola Needs.
iFly -- Best travel rates between San Francisco, New York, LA, Austin TX, and Boulder CO.
iProtest -- Your Avatar waves a custom sign on strategically-located screens scattered through major metro areas.
iDoNotKnowWhatThisiCrapIs -- New user application.

Podunk wrote:

From what I understand, Valve has been working on some very ambitious stuff for Mac. I don't know how much they are ready to reveal, but they've had their eye on that platform for a long time.

Porting over the steam engine would be nice but unless they built tech to port over their catalog of Steam games, I'm not sure how much of an impact they can have. Also, I'm not sure there is a large market for games on the Mac. (of course, there needs to be content to build the market)

I don't think we're going to see that much of an impact. Apple doesn't care about games, well they care more about games on their computers than Microsoft does.

Ulairi wrote:

Porting over the steam engine would be nice but unless they built tech to port over their catalog of Steam games, I'm not sure how much of an impact they can have. Also, I'm not sure there is a large market for games on the Mac. (of course, there needs to be content to build the market)

I don't think we're going to see that much of an impact. Apple doesn't care about games, well they care more about games on their computers than Microsoft does.

I have no idea how much impact there will be, but from what little I know concerning Valve's efforts, the stuff that they're working on is quite impressive. I think that's all I can say without losing my Valve privileges.

Podunk wrote:
Ulairi wrote:

Porting over the steam engine would be nice but unless they built tech to port over their catalog of Steam games, I'm not sure how much of an impact they can have. Also, I'm not sure there is a large market for games on the Mac. (of course, there needs to be content to build the market)

I don't think we're going to see that much of an impact. Apple doesn't care about games, well they care more about games on their computers than Microsoft does.

I have no idea how much impact there will be, but from what little I know concerning Valve's efforts, the stuff that they're working on is quite impressive. I think that's all I can say without losing my Valve privileges. ;)

Are they going to partner with Urban Outfitters to make the next Half-life episode more mac friendly?

I hope they announce some cool stuff for the Mac, I think it would go a long way helping PC gaming gain some traction with the games press.

iSandvich is now my wallpaper.

Podunk wrote:

I think that's all I can say without losing my Valve privileges. ;)

There's a part of my that envies you for all the insider Valve info that you posses. The other part wants to beat you senseless with a shovel and keep all the info for myself.

So has anyone else had the client crash when trying to purchase a game? I was buying BF:BC2 and it got to the payment screen, I was using PayPal so it opened another window I put in my info and Steam closed. Luckily it didn't charge me, and I was able to purchase it through the Steam online store in Firefox.

Podunk wrote:

From what I understand, Valve has been working on some very ambitious stuff for Mac. I don't know how much they are ready to reveal, but they've had their eye on that platform for a long time.

Ideas of selling a game at all on Mac is pretty ambitious.

Those parody ads are brilliant.

By this point, there can't be too many Mac gamers who don't have Boot Camp set up, but it'd be nice to not have to reboot to just to play a game.

Sounds major.

KingGorilla wrote:

Ideas of selling a game at all on Mac is pretty ambitious.

*cough* Worth noting that Blizzard has been co-releasing Mac and Windows versions of all of their stuff for a long time. I was amazed when I discovered that not only was SC2 for the Mac still being patched, but that they had PORTED IT TO MAC OS X.

I'm doing all my gaming on the PC these days, but I still use a Mac for work, and I wouldn't mind at all if I could have access to some chunk of Steam on the Mac platform without dual-booting.

did I mention I love Valve?

[And yes I know some have already been posted.

IMAGE(http://images.macrumors.com/article/2010/03/03/145949-valve_teaser_500.jpg)

IMAGE(http://images.eurogamer.net/assets/articles//a/9/9/4/1/8/3/ss_preview_05_Francis.jpg.jpg)

IMAGE(http://images.macrumors.com/article/2010/03/03/150310-valvemac-lg.jpg)

IMAGE(http://images.macrumors.com/article/2010/03/03/154953-valve_5_800.jpg)

IMAGE(http://images.macrumors.com/article/2010/03/03/154425-valve_3_800.jpg)

IMAGE(http://images.macrumors.com/article/2010/03/03/204931-valve_6.jpg)

It also appears as if they have sent 1 image each to a different news outlet. Cunning

In one the updates yesterday, they finally implemented saving your selection of the Library view. e.g. if you had chosen to only display installed games, the next time you started Steam it would revert back to showing All Games. Now it retains your most recent choice.

STORE WISHLIST! F-yeah

Steam on mac in april

Steam and Valve's library of games including Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series will be available in April.
Scratched wrote:

Steam on mac in april

Steam and Valve's library of games including Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series will be available in April.

Best April Fool's joke EVER!

Podunk wrote:

I have no idea how much impact there will be, but from what little I know concerning Valve's efforts, the stuff that they're working on is quite impressive. I think that's all I can say without losing my Valve privileges. ;)

For most of my friends, they all have two computers: 1 is a Mac, 1 is a PC pretty much dedicated to gaming. The more games running under OS X there are, the more likely they'll ditch that secondary system.

Granted, with the majority of Macs (my 24" iMac for instance, macbook pro, etc.) you lose most of the ability to upgrade on the fly for new things, but to be honest, I am not missing running in that race anymore.

I run bootcamp on my iMac to play games, and I wouldn't mind getting rid of that booting barrier.

Scratched wrote:

iSandvich is now my wallpaper.

What about iScout? It's been my icon for atleast a year now.

ukickmydog wrote:
Scratched wrote:

iSandvich is now my wallpaper.

What about iScout? It's been my icon for atleast a year now.

We are rarely humiliated by the sandwich.

Podunk wrote:

I have no idea how much impact there will be, but from what little I know concerning Valve's efforts, the stuff that they're working on is quite impressive. I think that's all I can say without losing my Valve privileges. ;)

I can confirm, as well. One of the things we can talk about today: The simultaneous release of Portal 2 for the MAC and PC. This should also apply to all further releases.

Press release

"Our Steam partners, who are delivering over a thousand games to 25 million Steam clients, are very excited about adding support for the Mac," said Jason Holtman, Director of Business Development at Valve. "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."

Wow.

Valve is the driver of the PC gaming platform now.

Awesome. One step closer to dumping bootcamp. I'm already using a separate XP install on a VM to handle much older games through Steam, so it's only the newer releases that require me to switch over. That'd be fantastic if some other developers jumped on the bandwagon.