steam-mac posts

While its only been a few months since Valve added support for Mac games in its Steam game download service, the latest results from Steam's voluntary hardware survey still show that Mac gamers comprise only a fraction of Steam's total audience. The July survey results show that only 5.07 percent of Steam users have Mac-based operating systems.

However the latest Microsoft operation system, Windows 7, is gaining in market share with just over 40 percent of Steam users recorded as having the OS installed on their systems (both 32-bit and 64-bit versions). Windows XP users, while losing market share, is still installed in a large fraction of Steam players' PCs with a total of over 33 percent (again with both 32-bit and 64-bit users).

Valve made a big move a few months ago when it launched its Mac game download service on Steam. However some people have complained that some of the Mac ports of Valve games such as Half-Life 2 have not been as solid as the PC versions. Now the Steam web site has detailed some of the performance improvements that Valve has made to the Mac versions of its games.

Valve says it has worked with Apple to get the improvements in the Mac ports, saying, "In addition to low-level implementation changes which have improved performance across the board, Apple has also removed some implementation inefficiencies which allow us to improve visual quality, most notably in the area of GPU occlusion queries." So not only should Valve's Mac ports run better they should also look better. On newer Mac products Valve states, "Depending on the game, video settings and the hardware, we have measured frame rate improvements from 15 percent to 120 percent on these systems." There's a ton of technical stuff on how Valve manage to get more performance out of its Mac games in the post.

It's a few months since Valve began adding Mac games to its Steam PC game download service. Many in the industry had considered the Mac platform to be a dead end for making native games. However in a chat with Valve's Jason Holtman and Doug Lombardi at Gamesindustry.biz (free registration required) it sounds like Mac gaming is alive and well, thank you.

While Valve, as usual, isn't giving out specifics on Mac game sales via Steam, Holtman feels that there is an overall surge of interest for gaming on the Mac in the past few months since Steam's Mac support launched. He states, "The reaction that we've got from the development community is that this could be a big ingredient towards that renaissance. People have both a business motivation as well as a personal motivation to see games on the Mac. They want to play them themselves." He added that this reaction has come from both indie game developers as well as " the big guys."

That other sci-fi top down shooter on Steam that's not Alien Swarm is Alien Breed: Impact. The game, which debuted on the Xbox 360 first as Alien Breed Evolution, was finally released last June for the PC via Steam. Now you can purchase and download the game for 50 percent off for a limited time.

That means you can get developer Team17's latest title for just $7.49 from now until Thursday on Steam. You can also get a two pack bundle (one for you and one to give to a friend) for just $11.24. Team17's next gave via Steam will be Worms Reloaded which will be released on August 26.

Valve's launch of its Steam PC game download service for the Mac last May has been pretty successful, as least according to the company. A new Gamesindustry.biz article (free registration required) quotes Valve's business development director Jason Holtman as saying "we're seeing between a 15 and 20 percent increase in games that have a Mac version on Steam" in terms of sales figures. Specific sales figures were not revealed, as per Valve's history of keeping those number a secret.

In order to make more PC games available to Mac gamers, Holtman said they plan to "release some of our graphics code for the GL layer" for any game developer that will both be porting games to the Mac and will also use Valve's Steamworks tools. He states, "So our Steamworks partners will have access to some of the hard work that we do to get our games up on Mac, and they'll be able to incorporate that into their games - and our hope is it gets them there faster."

As promised on Tuesday Valve has now released the long awaited Mac port of their 2004 first person shooter classic Half-Life 2 via their Steam client In addition Half-Life 2 Episodes 1 and 2 have also been released for the Mac. Also, both the PC and Mac ports of Half-Life 2 and Episode 1 finally include Steam achievements for the first time and sport some graphical improvements based on the latest Source Engine (which Episode 2 already has). Finally all three games now support Steam Cloud which allows players to save games online and use them on any PC with a Steam client.

To celebrate all three games get a big 30 percent off sale for a limited time. Half-Life 2 is now priced at just $6.99 while Episodes 1 and 2 are on sale for $5.59 each. Finally The Orange Box which has Half-Life 2, Episodes 1 and 2, Portal and Team Fortress 2 (coming to the Mac "soon) is priced at $20.99

As promised a number of weeks ago, Valve is finally bringing its classic 2004 shooter Half-Life 2 to the Mac platform via Steam. The game will be released on Wednesday as part of Valve's now regular weekly update of adding new Mac games to the Steam platform.

Shacknews has confirmed that the release of Half-Life 2 will also include Mac versions of the game's two mini-expansions, Episode 1 and Episode 2. It's likely that people who already own the PC version of the game will be able to download the Mac version for free. It's unknown if this release will also finally add the long awaited Steam achievements to Half-Life 2.

Valve's launch of the Mac version of their Steam game download service has been a success, but there's one big issue that a number of Mac users of Steam don't care for. When Valve launched the Mac client it chose to put all of the downloadable game content in a sub-folder of a Mac's Document folder. Some Mac users have complained that they like backing up their Documents files but may not want to back up their game content there and others don't want their game files in such a viable location

In short, Valve decided to locate the Steam files in that part of the Mac OS because they wanted a way for users to quickly delete all Steam game files if they wanted to. However Valve is now working on a way to put the Steam files in a lower priority location on the Mac OS and if you want to delete Steam it will ask you if you want to delete all of your game files as well. There's no word on when this Mac Steam update will go live.

As promised, Valve has made Wednesdays the day for new game releases for the Mac side of their Steam game download service. This week 12 new Mac titles have been added to Steam including the promised Mac port of Tripwire Interactive's zombie shooter Killing Floor. Also out this week is the Mac port of Altitude, the side-scrolling action game from Nimbly Games, and Madballs in Babo: Invasion, the quirky action game from developer Playbrains. All three games have online multiplayer modes that allows Mac users to play with their PC counterparts.

Also this week all three games have discounted prices with Killing Floor priced at $13.39, Madballs at $4.99, the Madballs Combo Pack (the game plus DLC releases) at $9.09, and Altitude at $4.99. Altitude is also free to play from now until the end of the weekend. You can check out the full list of new Mac games on Steam after the jump:

One of 2009's surprise PC game hits is now heading for the Mac as part of Valve's Steam launch on Wednesday. Valve has confirmed that Runic Games' action-RPG Torchlight will be included to purchase and download when the Mac client of Steam is made available. If you already own the PC version you will be able to download the Mac port on Steam for free.

Valve also announced that their own game Portal will be available to download Wednesday via Steam and that new games will be added to the Mac Steam client every Wednesday. Valve also announced that all Source Engine licenses will get access to the native Mac OS X version and that all Mac developers will be able to use Steamworks features like achievements, leaderboards, auto-updating and more.