Valve has been steadily bringing their computer games over to the Mac platform via Steam in the last few months. Every Wednesday, they update the list of games available for Mac, and about every other week they’ve added one of their own to the repertoire, to mass excitement. The games go on sale and Valve makes bank with the increased amount of people purchasing and enjoying their great games while the consumers benefit by having their platform evolve into a tier 1 gaming platform, attracting not only games from Valve (who own Steam), but also third-party developers who want a slice of the fruit.
Ever since Steam has been released on Mac OS X, Valve has ported almost all of their games. We’ve got Portal, Half-Life 2 (all episodes), Team Fortress 2, and now Counter-Strike: Source. The only games that are missing are the original Half-Life, the original Counter Strike, Team Fortress Classic, and Left 4 Dead 1 and 2.
Now, as much as I would love them to, I doubt that Valve will end up releasing all Counter-Strike 1.6, Half-Life, and Team Fortress Classic. However, Left 4 Dead is on the chopping block, and I’m sure Mac gamers will have it by next Wednesday.
Now, whether or not they’ll release both Left 4 Dead titles simultaneously is unknown to me, but I’m sure that both WILL be released. They’ve already got a good bit of competition on the Mac platform, however, with Killing Floor, which was released for the platform early on. Regardless, I’m sure Left 4 Dead on the Mac will make quite a splash, as well as complete their porting for the platform, sans original games.
Gaming on the Mac has exploded since the release of Steam. And for people such as myself who purchased all the Valve games back in the day (who don’t have to repurchase to play on the Mac), it’s an absolute joy. Every time a Valve game is released, I get it… For free, basically. I mean, sure, I paid for it, but that was a few years ago.
It’s nice.
As far as third-party support for the platform goes, it hasn’t quite gotten to an awesome point, but it is definitely much more concentrated and available to the masses through Steam. Valve has made the Mac an awesome platform for gaming, and it doesn’t look like they’ll stop any time soon.
In fact, they’ve announced that Portal 2 will have a same-day release on Mac as PC. They are now one of the only giant development companies who treat Mac users like the rest of the world (another of which is Blizzard, who have been at it for years and years). Valve is hugely gaining respect from the whole gaming community for their efforts here, as well as just being awesome with customer support and having a huge presence in the gaming scene recently, especially on sites like Reddit where users have posted many times about Gabe Newell responding to their (sometimes silly) emails. (He’s even made a fat joke or two himself!)
We’re almost there, boys. We’ve almost got the whole collection.
This is looking good.
Related posts:
- Half-Life 2 for Mac Released
- Mac Gaming Gaining Traction
- Steam for Mac Released – First Impressions
- Half life 2 for Mac Steam!
- Team Fortress 2 Hitting Mac Tomorrow
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