Valve Hopes for Thriving Mac Game Community

[Austin MacKenzie]

Valve Hopes for Thriving Mac Game Community

While Mac gamers around the country can rejoice at Steam's release, none are cheering more than Valve itself.

The Escapist <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/98946-Valve-Announces-Steam-and-Source-for-Mac>reported Steam was going to be seeing a Mac release, boasting the same Valve content and release dates as the PC version. This will allow Valve to provide Mac users with the same gaming content they give PC users with no lag in release dates, in addition to giving cross-platform support.

"We are using this feature to provide cross-platform access to all Valve games to those who already own the PC version. We hope other developers and publishers will use it in the same way," Cook said.

The project, Cook said, has been a priority for Valve for quite some time, with Valve director Gabe Newell personally contributing to the project on a daily basis. It is Valve's hope, Cook said, that this will produce a thriving Mac-based gaming community. They are hoping other developers will follow suit, keeping Mac users up-to-date on content release.

"We consider this to be the biggest event in Steam's history since the service was first launched," John Cook, Valve director of Steam development said. "There are several people involved, from the UI team working on Mac support in the Steam client to graphics engineers working on the native version of Source and our games. It's a big effort."

Source: <a href=http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=239636?cid=OTC-RSS&attr=CVG-News-RSS>CVG


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[Lordmarkus]

I wouldn't get too hyped about it, Macs are made to work on, not to have fun with.

 

[Doc Incognito]

I wouldn't get too hyped about it, Macs are made to work on, not to have fun with.

I think that they're what you make of them. I'm on a Mac right now, and I think it's loads of fun. So naturally, I'm really excited about "Steam for the rest of us."

 

[BlindMessiah94]

And let the mac bashing begin, because that's never been done before.
Fanboys.

I for one am happy as a mac user. I have owned both macs and pc's over the years and both have their ups and downs, but it will be nice to be able to play games on this baby once in a while.

 

[Simalacrum]

Hmmmmm...

being a Mac user myself, I'm actually quite curious about this...

How powerful a Mac do you need to run decent game graphics from Steam? I have pretty much 0 experience with PC gaming, and I use a Macbook... which isn't exactly very powerful

 

[Sir Kemper]

I Must know where you found that picture! It's awsome.

Alright on topic, it's cool that Mac user's finally get to enjoy such Quality games off of Steam.

Although, there's one problem, as the kind folks on TF2 put it:

"When i have a Newbie Mac Player Healing me, how am i going to tell him 'Right mouse to Ubercharge'?"

 

[Ninjamedic]

What about a thriving PS3 community? .........sorry.

 

[Random Argument Man]

I don't think my actual macbook could handle a game. However, maybe if I change to an Imac or a Macbook pro, i'll be able to snipe a few heads in TF2.

If things work, maybe Apple will provide some computers fitted for gaming.

 

[MrDarkling]

hmmm hopefully it should,I mean with a sudden open for lots of games MAC users should be all over it.

 

[Cherry Cola]

Hmmmmm...

being a Mac user myself, I'm actually quite curious about this...

How powerful a Mac do you need to run decent game graphics from Steam? I have pretty much 0 experience with PC gaming, and I use a Macbook... which isn't exactly very powerful

Well, I can play KotOR and Fallout 1-2 on my MacBook, but I couldn't run Mass Effect.

Not very detailed about what you can run, but hopefully it helped a bit.

 

[fd18e3d0-816e-11e4-b4a9-0800200c9a66]

I can run most games on my macbook fine with Bootcamp. It will be nice to run them natively though. I wish valve would say the release date for this.

 

[Cherry Cola]

What about a thriving PS3 community? .........sorry.

I'm pretty sure Mac hired a couple of PS3 developers. So the PS3 community will probably thrive as well

 

[ben---neb]

Valve performs a classic act of procastanation:

Doing something else when they should be making Half Life 2 Episode 3.

Come on guys, we all see through it, get a move on.

 

[PhunkyPhazon]

I wouldn't get too hyped about it, Macs are made to work on, not to have fun with.

I think that they're what you make of them. I'm on a Mac right now, and I think it's loads of fun. So naturally, I'm really excited about "Steam for the rest of us."

What he said. Besides, Mac's really aren't at all bad for gaming so long as you don't care about having your games at the absolute highest settings. And the hardware is progressively getting better.

 

[Random Argument Man]

Although, there's one problem, as the kind folks on TF2 put it:

"When i have a Newbie Mac Player Healing me, how am i going to tell him 'Right mouse to Ubercharge'?"

If he has a mouse with a right click, right click.
If he has a mouse with no right click, apple button+ click. (Which is right next to space)

 

[Jared]

I am sure people who have Macs are pretty excited about it.

I hope it will go well for them and then they can have fun with there very own turret XD

 

[Irridium]

Anyone else find it amusing how Valve can find time to port all their games and Steam to the Mac while the console gamers who have been clamoring for updates have been left in the cold?

No one else finds it funny? Ah well...

OT: I have a Macbook and it can run games just fine. It was able to handle COD4 on medium-high settings, so I'm looking forward to Steam and some Portal on the go.