bit-gamer.net

Valve teases Steam for Mac, iPhone?

Published on 4th March 2010 by Joe Martin

Valve has released a handful of images in the style of Apple adverts, teasing an upcoming announcement.

Valve has been very, very busy lately. At the same time as issuing repeated updates to Portal, which ties into an Alternate Reality Game we've tried to document, the Half-Life developer has also leaked a handful of images which tease an "upcoming announcement".

There's not definite word on what the announcement might be, but judging from the fact that the images echo the style of Apple adverts it's a safe bet that a Mac Steam client or official iPhone app is on the way.

It's rumoured that Valve will make further announcements about the new project - and possibly the ARG - at GDC 2010 next week.

Until then, you can browse the images below, via Macnn.com and let us know your thoughts in the forums.

Let us know your thoughts in the forums.

51 Comments

Discuss in the forums Reply

ChaosDefinesOrder 4th March 2010, 11:27

hahaha I love the "... and I'm a PC" one! Brilliant!

PureSilver 4th March 2010, 11:33

This doesn't solve the problem (I assume) that most of the games the Store sells still won't play on a Mac?

complover 4th March 2010, 11:34

Brilliant! I love using steam on my pc, great deals and great games - about time the MAC or iphone had something similar. Im hating the large amount of crap iphone apps currently being released at the minute.

Digi 4th March 2010, 11:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by PureSilver
This doesn't solve the problem (I assume) that most of the games the Store sells still won't play on a Mac?

And you don't think they would have thought about that already? Clearly they will have a solution for that particular conundrum or else why bother releasing it there in the first place?

theskirrid 4th March 2010, 11:50

Well, at least the front page will be easy to navigate for Mac users. It certainly won't be cluttered up with games.

Gunsmith 4th March 2010, 11:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by theskirrid
Well, at least the front page will be easy to navigate for Mac users. It certainly won't be cluttered up with games.

oh snap :D

javaman 4th March 2010, 12:01

valve are pure legends atm., they certainly know how to get your attention with we puzzles and clues. Kinda keeps you excited about whats comming up more than a few words in some article. Muse have done things like this for album launches. TBH need more puzzel games out there.

flibblesan 4th March 2010, 12:02

I suspect they are going to release a native Mac client for Steam and provide game downloads via a Cider wrapper. Most of Valves games already work under Cider anyway.

[PUNK] crompers 4th March 2010, 12:06

sounds like a good idea to me. although when that G5 isnt pulling its weight anymore and you have to spend £3,000 on a system rather than £150 on a graphics card - ouch

PureSilver 4th March 2010, 12:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Digi
And you don't think they would have thought about that already? Clearly they will have a solution for that particular conundrum or else why bother releasing it there in the first place?

Like what? The wrapper explanation is a good one, and so is the possibility that what we're going to see is just ten billion variations on Tap Tap Revenge, but here's the real crux of the problem. Most Macs have extremely basic graphics hardware - i.e., will struggle to play most of the recent games the Store sells at any decent setting/framerate - and that's not something Valve can fix with a neat downloadable solution. Is the store only going to sell you games it thinks you will be able to play?

The profusion of Valve's own characters - particularly from the more modern games - in the adverts suggests to me that there's a wrapper-based solution for the Source engine being released here. That makes the most amount of sense - this way Valve maximizes profits by selling it's own games, and the Source engine isn't so demanding that nobody will be able to play them. It's got to be wrapper-based because the engine's now pretty old, so I doubt they'd go to the trouble of creating a Mac alternative purely to sell some disinterested Mac owners TF2. But I'll eat my hat, your hat, and anybody else's hat if they can sell you half of the games in the Store upon release to play on your Mac.

Digi 4th March 2010, 12:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by PureSilver
Like what? The wrapper explanation is a good one, and so is the possibility that what we're going to see is just ten billion variations on Tap Tap Revenge, but here's the real crux of the problem. Most Macs have extremely basic graphics hardware - i.e., will struggle to play most of the recent games the Store sells - and that's not something Valve can fix with a neat downloadable solution.

I have to say, you're right there. I know they will have a solution but how or what is not something I have worked out. Let's trust valve shall we? They usually come through in the end.

PureSilver 4th March 2010, 12:23

I hope so. I actually think this is a bit of a rearguard action by Valve; they recognise an increasing number of Mac buyers - and therefore a decreasing number of PC buyers. That means that unless they can find a way to start selling Mac buyers games, their target market is shrinking because Mac owners who want to game buy a console, not a PC.

I also think this is not "we have games for you to play" so much as it's "we have a distribution platform for games" so developers will consider making Mac-native games that Valve can make a profit on selling on.

Omnituens 4th March 2010, 12:30

In league with Popcap to spread PvZ and Zuma to the Mac Masses.

gavomatic57 4th March 2010, 12:58

I wonder if we'll see the native versions of Bioshock, Call of Duty(s), Doom 3, X3 Terran Conflict, Rome Total War, Tales of Monkey Island, Quakewars, Prey etc or just PC versions running on Cider?

I also hope it does well - it would be nice to see more titles making it to the mac (and ideally, linux!)

theskirrid 4th March 2010, 12:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by PureSilver
I hope so. I actually think this is a bit of a rearguard action by Valve; they recognise an increasing number of Mac buyers - and therefore a decreasing number of PC buyers. That means that unless they can find a way to start selling Mac buyers games, their target market is shrinking because Mac owners who want to game buy a console, not a PC.

The Mac market is so miniscule compared to the PC market though this must be aimed at shifting their own catalogue.
An increasing number of Macs doesn't mean there's a decreasing number of PCs. Just that the PC market may be growing slightly less quickly.
When you check the latest Steam survey results and see the explosion in Win7 machines you'll realise that PC growth doesn't actually change that much, the size of the user base means it does not matter if it only increases 0.1%, that's still a metric f*ckton of hardware.

Sleepstreamer 4th March 2010, 13:05

Meh Mac... What we really want is native support for Linux.

Shepps 4th March 2010, 13:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by PureSilver
Most Macs have extremely basic graphics hardware - i.e., will struggle to play most of the recent games the Store sells at any decent setting/framerate - and that's not something Valve can fix with a neat downloadable solution. Is the store only going to sell you games it thinks you will be able to play?

Why should this be any different on mac to how the pc steam works? It's not like all pc hardware is upto playing bioshock 2 at decent frame rates now is it?

PureSilver 4th March 2010, 13:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by theskirrid
The Mac market is so miniscule compared to the PC market though this must be aimed at shifting their own catalogue.
An increasing number of Macs doesn't mean there's a decreasing number of PCs. Just that the PC market may be growing slightly less quickly.

The Mac percentage-of-market-share is increasing faster - much faster - at the expense of the PC. For example, Mac OS X’s share of the OS market increased from 7.31% in December 2007 to 9.63% in December 2008. If that trend can continue - and given the explosion in Apple product use, I don't see why it won't - they'll be a force to be reckoned with sooner or later. If you consider the number of games sold to iPhone users through the App Store, I think they'll even start to represent a part of the gaming market too. PC gaming is perpetually on the wane, it seems, and Valve is right to try and kickstart development for Mac games; who knows, maybe one day Apple will start to include more powerful graphics because of user demand.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shepps
Why should this be any different on mac to how the pc steam works? It's not like all pc hardware is upto playing bioshock 2 at decent frame rates now is it?

:|

Seriously? Because Mac hardware is not upgradeable by 99% of Mac users. That's why. Not all Steam PCs can play BioShock, but almost all of them could with an easy and inexpensive graphics card upgrade. Steam, therefore, can in good conscience and in good business practice sell it's games and people can choose to upgrade their hardware if they want to play it more smoothly. Macs, by contrast, cannot play BioShock or any other number of new and demanding games, and never will be able to because Cupertino locks down it's hardware and software. So probably half the AAA-rated games (i.e., the popular and profitable ones) on the Store categorically cannot be played at decent settings by ANY Macintosh PC. So Steam is theoretically attempting to retail games that cannot be played, or can only be played at 800x600 on a 27" iMac. That is a bad business model.

Woodspoon 4th March 2010, 13:24

Oh joy, now we're going to have to put up with smug Mac users telling us all how wonderful they are because they can now run even more 5 year old games at a rubbish setting.

g3n3tiX 4th March 2010, 13:32

The move to Webkit (was IE before) in the recent UI beta confirms this as well...

greigaitken 4th March 2010, 13:36

if only the sentries in tf2 were portal ones, they cant be detroyed but you can just knock em over

Hg 4th March 2010, 13:36

issue is the mac mouse only has one button! :p

Also if you zoom in and read the text on the last image, it basically spells out that steam is coming to mac... i have posted that image below

http://images.bit-tech.net/news_images/2010/03/valve-teases-steam-for-mac-iphone/5.jpg

gavomatic57 4th March 2010, 13:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sleepstreamer
Meh Mac... What we really want is native support for Linux.

Its a start - once you've ported over to a UNIX platform, a linux port probably isn't too much hassle. It will require a dramatic user shift over to linux to create a market for it though.

I'd have thought Microsoft's new £150 service pack would have been enough motivation for people to switch to linux, but clearly people need more convincing.

gavomatic57 4th March 2010, 13:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hg
issue is the mac mouse only has one button! :p

Also if you zoom in and read the text on the last image, it basically spells out that steam is coming to mac... i have posted that image below

http://images.bit-tech.net/news_images/2010/03/valve-teases-steam-for-mac-iphone/5.jpg

You can use any mouse on the mac...

leveller 4th March 2010, 14:22

This is brilliant news. Excellent. Absolutely awesome news. Valve are making the start of 2010 a fantastic year for PC/Mac gaming :)

frojoe 4th March 2010, 15:11

It would be nice if I didn't have to boot into windows to play games, because that's the only time I ever do boot into windows.

Cyberpower-UK 4th March 2010, 16:35

Steam is the original app store, credit and royalties from patent infringements where they're due...

sotu1 4th March 2010, 17:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by frojoe
It would be nice if I didn't have to boot into windows to play games, because that's the only time I ever do boot into windows.

yeh...me too :D

kingozzy666 4th March 2010, 19:23

The "I hate different" one is hilarious.

wuyanxu 4th March 2010, 21:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hg
issue is the mac mouse only has one button! :p

indeed, one mouse button or touch mouse buttons would never work in gaming. who will lift up primary finger just to do a right click?

yes, im a PC. (according to Apple, apparently there's a difference..........)

Shepps 4th March 2010, 21:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by PureSilver
So probably half the AAA-rated games (i.e., the popular and profitable ones) on the Store categorically cannot be played at decent settings by ANY Macintosh PC. So Steam is theoretically attempting to retail games that cannot be played, or can only be played at 800x600 on a 27" iMac. That is a bad business model.

Do you really think steam will try and flog games that won't run on macs? That wouldn't make sense at all. My point was that i doubt steam will limit what games it will sell you depending on your hardware. It'll be the same as pc games, check the specs before you buy.

edit :

Just to be clear, i dont think they will limit what they will sell you from the limited set of mac compatable games..

Hg 4th March 2010, 21:37

knowing steam they have prob developed a mac version of the source engine to allow them to push all of there games onto mac.
also have people also noticed that the logo on Gordon's suit behind the crowbar looks like an apple?

http://images.bit-tech.net/news_images/2010/03/valve-teases-steam-for-mac-iphone/2.jpg

airchie 5th March 2010, 01:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sleepstreamer
Meh Mac... What we really want is native support for Linux.

+1

I only stick with windows because it has my games on it and I'm a bit too lazy to learn linux.
I do have my laptop dual-booted though and find myself using linux more and more.
If I had steam with at least some AAA titles, windows would be gone tbh.
Any windows-only software would be run in a virtual machine.

So as has been said, if we get the AAA titles on Mac, hopefully it wouldn't be long til it came to linux. :)

knuck 5th March 2010, 01:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hg
knowing steam they have prob developed a mac version of the source engine to allow them to push all of there games onto mac.
also have people also noticed that the logo on Gordon's suit behind the crowbar looks like an apple?

http://images.bit-tech.net/news_images/2010/03/valve-teases-steam-for-mac-iphone/2.jpg

oh I didn't notice. nice

TTmodder 5th March 2010, 08:17

Dammit ValVe, forget about mac, focus on linux.

Hg 5th March 2010, 09:43

A new Image has been released being the sixth and final image, depicting Alyx Vance from Half-Life 2 in a reenactment of Apple's famous 1984 commercial?

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

OYecfV3ubP8

That pretty much sums it up for me, Steam has to be coming to mac...

digital roar 7th March 2010, 21:28

It seems like the question that comes up a lot is what non-casual games are on the Mac. Beyond the ports of AAA games that came to the Mac much later than their Windows counterparts, there have been some companies who do support Mac and PC right out of the box natively, Blizzard being one of the more notable.

Utilizing the power of the Unity game engine, you can quite easily port a game to both platforms without much tweaking at all. With Unity gaining popularity (http://unity3d.com/gallery/game-list/) youre likely to see more cross platform titles being developed. For example, we are and indie developer, but we are making what we consider to be a AAA quality game that will be for Mac and PC right out of the box. You can check it out at www.ascensionwar.com or look us up on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/ascensionwar

knuck 7th March 2010, 22:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hg
A new Image has been released being the sixth and final image, depicting Alyx Vance from Half-Life 2 in a reenactment of Apple's famous 1984 commercial?

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

OYecfV3ubP8

That pretty much sums it up for me, Steam has to be coming to mac...

haha so that's where Futurama got the idea from ! haha !!!

That actually makes perfect sense ! In Futurama they make a commercial for Planet Express, which is, for this episode, ran by a guy that was from the 1980s

Awesome. Awesome to the MAX

bagman 7th March 2010, 22:46

it is not all bad news as this could boost the number of titles which come out on pc instead of just ps3 and xbox game producers maybe swayed to put more games on pc as mac users come into the equation

cybergenics 8th March 2010, 11:48

You can get a GTX285 for a Mac for 'only' £400.

leveller 8th March 2010, 18:53

I just read an article on Gamasutra which says those of us that have Valve games on PC will automatically get Mac versions for free.

"owners of Valve games will have access to both platform versions"

smc8788 8th March 2010, 19:05

And apparently Mac and PC players will be able to play multiplayer games with each other. From now on you won't be called a noob, you'll be called a Mac user. Or, if you're really bad, a Mac noob

Hg 8th March 2010, 19:53

its now beeen confirmed http://www.valvesoftware.com/news.php?id=3568

Steam is on its way to mac

Quote:

Valve to Deliver Steam & Source on the Mac
Leading Gaming Service Expands to Mac Platform

March 8, 2010 - Valve announced today it will bring Steam, Valve's gaming service, and Source, Valve's gaming engine, to the Mac.

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.

"As we transition from entertainment as a product to entertainment as a service, customers and developers need open, high-quality Internet clients," said 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," 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."

"We looked at a variety of methods to get our games onto the Mac and in the end decided to go with native versions rather than emulation," said John Cook, Director of Steam Development. "The inclusion of WebKit into Steam, and of OpenGL into Source gives us a lot of flexibility in how we move these technologies forward. We are treating the Mac as a tier-1 platform so all of our future games will release simultaneously on Windows, Mac, and the Xbox 360. Updates for the Mac will be available simultaneously with the Windows updates. Furthermore, Mac and Windows players will be part of the same multiplayer universe, sharing servers, lobbies, and so forth. We fully support a heterogeneous mix of servers and clients. The first Mac Steam client will be the new generation currently in beta testing on Windows."

Portal 2 will be Valve's first simultaneous release for Mac and Windows. "Checking in code produces a PC build and Mac build at the same time, automatically, so the two platforms are perfectly in lock-step," said Josh Weier, Portal 2 Project Lead. "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."

wuyanxu 8th March 2010, 19:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by cybergenics
You can get a GTX285 for a Mac for 'only' £400.

don't forget the not-available-in-UK Razor gaming mice for Mac, they are all a good $20 more expensive than normal Razor mice.

i mean, you can't expect them to game on their wireless mighty/magic mouse? i've used one and they have awful input lag.

Aracos 8th March 2010, 20:07

EDIT: Beaten to it.

ChriX 8th March 2010, 20:58

Can't wait for this, no more booting into Windows!

airchie 8th March 2010, 21:08

So, how easy is it going to be to get the mac client going on Linux?

Hg 8th March 2010, 21:15

airchie i would assume that there will be a native linux client in the near furture.
If not then it wont be hard at all to get steam working under linux, the hard parts have now been taking care of, for example the source engine will have opengl support and the steam UI no longer requires IE ;)

knuck 8th March 2010, 21:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by wuyanxu
don't forget the not-available-in-UK Razor gaming mice for Mac, they are all a good $20 more expensive than normal Razor mice.

i mean, you can't expect them to game on their wireless mighty/magic mouse? i've used one and they have awful input lag.

which they would certainly deny to death ... until I get in the conversation

PureSilver 9th March 2010, 12:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by smc8788
And apparently Mac and PC players will be able to play multiplayer games with each other. From now on you won't be called a noob, you'll be called a Mac user. Or, if you're really bad, a Mac noob

I know probably nobody else cares about this, but the number of my friends at University that are Mac users means this is going to be a big deal. Major props to Valve for making this work, especially given that just about every other PC game that was released for Mac wouldn't play nice with the Mac version.

BLC 9th March 2010, 12:10

I don't really want to get drawn into the Mac vs. PC p*ssing contest - yawn... been there, seen it and done it... I was probably arguing about one system vs another when many of the users here were still toddlers

It's got to be a good move for Valve; for all the perceived advantages and disadvantages of either platform, the Mac is still a market to make money from. It might only be Valve software now, but look what Steam did for gaming on the PC - that started off with Counter Strike 1.6 and there are over 1000 games available now...