Wanna Play Steam Games On Mac, There's An App For That

Valve announced Steam for Mac users today and some extremely exciting details for all your reading pleasure.

Steam will be cross platform playable, players on both platforms will be able to play together in a shiny happy virtual universe.
Games will be scheduled to release at the same time on both platforms. No need to wait for the Mac version a month later, just play it when everyone else gets it.

Portal 2 will be Valve's first simultaneous release for Mac and Windows.
Finally the best news of the announcement, PC players that use Steam and decide to convert to Mac (not sure why you would?) will not have to re-purchase games that players already payed for. When you buy a game you get both copies, one for Mac and one for PC for one price. This is a fantastic benefit for players, who do not need to worry about shelling out that 29.99 again for a game they have been playing for months on their PC and want to also play on Mac.

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."

Valve is already saying that at launch, numerous popular titles will already be available for Mac users to enjoy such as Left 4 Dead 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and TF2. Good call Valve. Valve will be diligently working on updating their collection to be compatible on both Mac and PC, so be patient if your favorite game is not available on launch day.