Oh, Valve: they’re playing us like a harp this week, and frankly we don’t mind a jot when it’s this much fun. While everyone’s busy nattering about the Portal 2 (OR IS IT?), they slip a little something extra into the RPS inbox. That’ll be the charmingly retro-sociopathic words and pictures above, then. Which you’ll want to click on right away, in order to admire it in its full bigness. The instant response from all of us, aside from excited and grateful cooing noises, was “guh? But what does it mean?” We’re not very clever sometimes.
Then we worked out exactly what it means: Steam is, as has been recently rumoured (and supported by the recent move from hoary old IE to sprightly young, cross-platform webkit as a foundation for Steam), finally coming to the Apple Macintosh personal computer system. At least so it implies. We won’t find out for sure until the “upcoming announcement from Valve” mentioned in this crypto-mail, but certainly the cheeky image closely apes olden Apple ads in both form and tone. Compare this pic to something, or better yet, one of you industrious web-heroes could go and browse of classic Mac ads and no doubt you’ll find one they’ve closely cribbed from to make this.
So: the obvious take-home message, given the Mac OS in the photo and the mention of “different types of computers We’ll figure that out later. And, years later, they did” is Steam is coming to Macs. (Sorry, penguin people – no hint of Linux, unless you want to run with ‘different types of computers’). Hang on: Steam is coming to Macs.
Valve Dev Tool Texture Packs. Originally a mod for Quake, Team Fortress Classic transitioned to the GoldSource engine after Valve recruited the designers behind it.
Alright, we’re a PC blog, but whether or not you think OSX falls within our generally Windows-centric remit, that’s huge. Surprisingly for such a tightly-controlled platform, gaming on the Mac is still all over the bloody place – many of the biggest games make it over eventually, but often months after the event, while many never arrive at all. No-one in their right mind buys a Mac for gaming, even though even the lowest-end currently-available desktops and laptops are more than capable of running most modern stuff. It’s ripe for a takeover, frankly. Someone with Valve’s status and clout coming up with a centralised distribution system for Mac games means they could theoretically corner this spotty market in the blink of a hummingbird’s eye. As in, this could be a games-only App Store for OSX. The crucial question is exactly what they’ve got up their sleeve, however.
Is it it just their own games (Source titles have lacked official Mac version), is it the same tardy, mixed bag of games already available for OSX, or have they been quietly galvanising developers and publishers to port stuff in a more timely fashion? Given Macs’ growing share of the computer market, it’s way past time that the games industry took it more seriously, regardless of the fact that the more affordable Macs aren’t graphically toe-to-toe with equivalently-priced PCs. Or, and I admit this is so unlikely that even writing it makes me sound like an insane fantasist, is Mac Steam going to include a wrapper/virtualisation tech that enables most Windows games to be played on OSX, a la Crossover or Parallels Desktop? Doubtful, but God only knows what this actually entails. Whichever, my immediate concern, because I’m a selfish little snot, is whether Win-Steam and Mac-Steam accounts will be twinned – I own a Mac as well as PC. I want access to my stuff on both. However, this might have nothing to do with OSX, at least not in its standard form.
Take a look at the bottom of this image – notice those dots. They’re awfully similar to the dots at the bottom of an iPhone (and possibly iPad – I really need to take a closer shufti at one of those curious bastards), used to navigate between the world-eating portable device’s screens full of icons. Is that an implication the neo-Steam is related to the App Store instead? Given Apple’s monstrously tight restrictions, it seems unlikely they’d hand store rights over to a third party. Perhaps the dots are simply intended to offset the vintage nature of the pseudo-ad with something more modern. Or or it’s nothing whatsoever to do with Steam on Macs after all, and it’s another bewildering part of the ongoing Portal ARG.
The choice of an ancient Mac OS in this ad seems a little obtuse in a way – it’s possible they’re just being playful, or it’s possible it’s along the lines of the GLADOS 3.11 mentions in the Portal ASCII art pulled off the Aperture Science BBS. Those dots might mean this is part one of six, and we’ll see related images cropping up on other sites, which require bonding together and somehow decoding. I’m bracing myself for the possibility I’m going to look more ridiculous than a businessman on a skateboard once whatever this ad really means is revealed. Valve are notorious teases, after all. I won’t be at all surprised if I’ve just been tricked into writing 700 words about something that isn’t happening. Allow me to leave a prophetic “you utter bastards” here, just in case. We’ll find out, I don’t doubt, at GDC, or close to it.
Perhaps it’s going to be an omni-announcement, Portal 2 and Mac Steam, and an OSX-rejiggered the Source engine collection as the vanguard for it. Either way, the veins on the internet’s sweaty forehead are going to be pulsing even more than usual for the next week or so. A note on the image, by the way. We were sent a much larger version than the fullish-size one we’ve got here, but our weeny servers couldn’t possibly handle the strain of serving that to a squillion people. It’s possible, however, that there’s some secret information hidden in the big’un.
There’s nothing hidden in the EXIF data as far as I can tell, but if you see a hint that there might be something of note squirreled away in the original file, drop us a line (with a brief explanation of what you think it might be) and we’ll see if we can share it with you. Theorists: go theorise. How Tall Is Nascar Drivers. Update: the sign of six is now explained, at least. Witness further Macified Valve imagery at,,, and.
Each carry their own page dot. So that’s that for now – and pretty much proof positive that this is indeed Steam for OSX. Additional update: our own Baron of Bargains LewieP has cunningly drawn up of which Steam games already have Mac ports, which potentially gives us a good picture of what iSteam (ouch, let’s never call it that again) may launch with. Excellent work, sir P.
Additional additional update: Portal just updated itself again, with the update notes listing simply “added valuable asset retrieval.” Mystery hunters, go! Says: I’d be buggered if I ditched Microsoft just to crawl into bed with Apple. It’ll be like trading in a somewhat neglectful but authoritarian government for an overbearing parent.
At least in the PC sphere of things my hardware isn’t locked down, and judging by Apple’s closed-garden approach to the iPhone/Pod/Pad trinity they’d quite like to get a lockdown on the software market as well. Of course, cross platform support, particularly for OSX means lowered barriers to getting stuff working on Linux. I’m not sure that the market there would grow sufficiently for me to make the shift of main OS but shifting eggs into a few more baskets can only be a good thing. However, I think this announcement is a long way off from that.
I think we can assume that we’ll see Mac ports of both Steam and Source, and a few other non-valve titles joining the market. But I don’t think there will be any significant market shift here. Vinraith says: @James G At least in the PC sphere of things my hardware isn’t locked down, and judging by Apple’s closed-garden approach to the iPhone/Pod/Pad trinity they’d quite like to get a lockdown on the software market as well. Indeed, we should really start referring to Apple as “iProprietary.” None of MS’s attempts to close their open platform have been half as successful as Apple’s pushes in the same direction. It’s a little frightening how quickly people will hand over freedom and control as long as the package is pretty. Says: @Vinraith Some people just don’t seem to care, they don’t even see the trade off. I suppose if you are only going to be using a system for a few confined uses, then it is easy to miss.
Meanwhile I am a person who will immediately try and stretch and subvert something just because I can. I suppose one of the reasons I’m happy enough with the trade-off on using Windows of Linux is because I can’t code. (At least outside simple scripting languages) As a result, the fact I can’t dip into the source isn’t a barrier.
I have made a freedom shinyness trade off in this case just at a different level. (Although in some ways, the shinyness I have favoured is freedom of a different kind, freedom of choice. I don’t know what OS I’d be using if I wasn’t a gamer.*) * I still prefer Paint Shop Pro to the GIMP for instance. Office also has a minor edge over OpenOffice.org, if only for reasons of compatibility. Says: So, the whole closed-Apple-vs.-open-Windows thing is kind of silly. The main thing you lose the ability to swap out at will is video cards.
Since Macs tend to ship with decent video hardware from the start, I don’t see this as a major loss. Also, it means you don’t run into stupid driver incompatibility And from my own experience, I’ve found Mac ownership to be MUCH less of a pain than using Windows. Things tend to just work, whereas with Windows, let me see I’ve had to upgrade video drivers to get games to work, and heck, I had to upgrade the BIOS on my PC to get a hard drive to show up correctly!
I have NEVER had to do anything like that on any of the Macs I’ve owned, going back to 1990. (Well, okay, I did use 3dfx’s beta firmware to run a Voodoo 3000 card in my PowerMac 8600/300, but I knew what I was getting into there and that it wasn’t an everyday kind of thing.) In the meantime, my MacBook Pro has third-party RAM in it, and a third-party hard drive that I installed myself. Heck, there are instructions on how to do that in the manual.
It didn’t even require a torx screwdriver, like G4 PowerBooks did. In addition, it’s much easier to install and remove software on the Mac than on PCs– no registry, no directories full of junk stuck in weird places, no DLLs in the same directory as the OS for no obvious reason And if you want to do unixy things, you can, easily.
Overall, the “But it’s a closed platform!” argument has become less and less true since the switch to OS X, and these days it sounds a little desperate. Says: @ Vinraith @ James G Russians vote for Putin, they know he curtails freedom, but he’s made everything work. There’s less corruption (outlying states were run like fiefdoms with taxes going straight into magistrates pockets), crime is down, investment is up compare Russia now to the 1990s when the gangsters ran everything few Russians would want to go back to that.
The popularity of Macs works along the same lines, sure you have less freedom, but at least you don’t have to worry about viruses or system crashes, you can get on with your life. A lot of people are happy with that situation.
Interstella says: Wow, my first RPS comment:-) I’ve been reading this site for a very long time now, having been a PC man of old. However, in the last 2 years, I’ve converted to Macs purely because as a sound engineer, they’re better for my job (and being poor, I can’t afford to have a Mac and a PC) – so for my gaming needs, I went out and bought an Xbox. But this news brings restored hope. If it’s true, I can finally go back to some semblance of my first love – no more fiddling with controllers, proper aiming and a decent selection of games!
If it comes off, I will be a happy man. And depending on how much is implemented, hopefully no longer prone to bouts of rage every time I see something awesome that I can’t play written about on this site! Says: Oh, probably me. I’m pretty excited about this, and I’ve been cringing as even RPS, which is usually a beacon of intelligent (or at least not-as-stupid) conversation compared to most gaming sites, gives in to preemptive “MAC USERS ARE SNOBS” whining, before anyone even posted any “HA HA NOW I CAN PLAY GAMES ON MY SHINY COMPUTER WHICH IS INCIDENTALLY NOT ONLY MORE EXPENSIVE THAN YOUR UNCOUTH WINDOWS MACHINE BUT ALSO MORE ELEGANT AND REFINED” stuff. The hostile PC user has become more of a cliche than the smug Mac user.
(Although, yes, there’s truth to that too.). LeonardHatred says: You know, i recently got given a spiffy iMac for work and only today i was saying how the only thing keeping me a PC Gaym0r was the mac’s apparent inability to not be shit at games.
Who’ll join me making a giant PC bonfire? Yes, i realise now i will be branded the worst kind of mac fanboy, i’m really not. Delonghi Pinguino C21 Manual Arts there. I too felt those pangs of inadequacy when people flaunted their sexy metal hashkey-less keyboards at me, but get over it.
They’re all Intel Inside these days, dont’cha know. Apple: another facet of PC gaming, wot? Wulf says: The one with the two turrets is an absolutely beautiful bit of parody that made me chuckle, suffice it to say, I’m glad we’re not glaDOS. I’d be a little put out if my computer frequently desired to kill me with neurotoxins, as opposed to actually being the thing of functional beauty that it is..>Ahem! This is incredibly selfish, but there’s one great thing to come out of all this and it’s of benefit to all of us: The in-game web browser won’t be shit any more! We don’t have to put up with worrying about all the little Internasties that IE loves letting in, no matter how locked down it is. And if you’re naive enough to believe that MS has a handle on that, then you don’t read Secunia, and if you use a computer then you should be following a security advisory for the apps you use, otherwise it’s only your own bloody fault when the poor thing comes down with a billion pieces of horrendous malware.
WebKit isn’t as favoured by me as the engines behind Gecko and Chrome, as both of which are greatly superior to WebKit, but WebKit is still a huge step up from IE, and one of the most recommended features for Steam to have. I think I might try that beta, now. Says: I’m guessing they will be, since it’s Valve announcing the ports and so on. Half-Life was ported to the Mac, way back when, but the completed and playable Mac version was shelved because the network code didn’t work with the PC (something to do with using Microsoft’s DirectPlay library, or DirectNet?
Something like that). This was frustrating to people who wanted the single-player game, but understandable. Valve has high standards, and didn’t want to ship a half-assed port If they’re announcing it like this, I be there’ll be perfect interconnectability. I’m curious, though, if they’ll set up cross-licensing– that is, since I own HL2 and Portal and so on for the PC, will I automagically be able to download the Mac version? That would pretty much make my day, and seems like a Valvey thing to do, but I’m not holding my breath.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they discount the Mac version for owners of the PC version. I am curious, too, if they’re actually porting the engine, or if they’ve just come up with a different and actually totally workable wrapper solution for existing PC code. I kind of doubt it, but you never know. Says: I must say this is excellent news. I’d rather Valve do this than any other company. Y’see the thing about DRM is I don’t mind it so much when it’s applied well and works. Valve get it right with Steam, don’t treat their users like idiots and deserve the success they have.
To see them stake out this territory is a logical move – yes macs make up a small percentage of the overall market. But also remember most of the machines are reasonably high spec, and should be capable of producing an enjoyable gaming experience. I work on my mac and have my PC which I now use solely for games. Maintaining 2 systems (+ a PS3 and a Wii) is a bit extravagant, and I’d be a happy camper if I could have Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead (which compromises most of my game time on PC anyway) without having to boot my pc, or waste hard drive space on a Windows Install on my mac. Somebody else commented Mac Gaming = PC Gaming? Which is an interesting thought too.