Mac Gaming - Mac OS X Release of Steam

Mac OS X Release of Steam

On February 23, 2010, after the release of a public open beta version of Steam, a member on the Steam forums found new files pertaining to Mac OS X in the program files of the beta. After several days of speculation by the gaming community, a series of six images were sent out by Valve Corporation on March 3, 2010, hinting at a Mac version of Steam. These pictures, each depicting characters from their games reenacting famous apple advertisements, were sent to major computer and gaming websites, both Mac- and PC-related, with iPhone-like page dots at the bottom of each. The six recipients were Eurogamer, MacRumors, MacNN, Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Shacknews, and MacWorld.

Five days later, on March 8, 2010, Valve Corporation made the official announcement in a press release on their Steam website. In the announcement, Valve stated that they will be porting their entire library of games over to Mac when the client is released in April 2010, and that they decided on native versions of their games, rather than emulations. Valve also announced that any games purchased over Steam for computers running Windows will be available for free download to computers running Mac OS X, and vice versa. What was also stressed was that Mac and Windows users will be using the same servers, will obtain updates simultaneously, and will be part of the same multiplayer environment, essentially promising a completely integrated Steam environment. When steam was released for Mac OS X the award winning game Portal was made free for both users of PC and Mac to download. The first game to be released simultaneously for Mac and Windows by Valve was Portal 2 in April, 2011.