One of the biggest desires for Mac gamers for the last 5 years or so was that Valve’s Digital Download service Steam would come to the Mac, especially after the switch to Intel processors and ‘Cider’ ports made bringing Windows games to the Mac easier than ever. Steam is a service that debuted with Half-Life 2 in 2004, and provides a store with full account management, game launcher with integrated patch management, and an integrated gaming community.

Crossover Games has helped – it is more or less a commercial version of Wine (Linux service) that provides a ‘Windows micro-environment’ for running games. Some folks have had success running certain Steam games that way, but for most it was a pale imitation of the real thing.

The images above were discovered by someone on the Steam forums, and point to OS X elements newly present after the most recent UI (user interface) update. Of course, like anything else, the presence of a few annotated icons doesn’t indicate the existence of an actual product. But as someone who loves Steam, depends on it for a ton of gaming, and also loves my Mac, the thought of getting any amount of my Mac gaming through a Steam service … well, it has me positively giddy!

So what about you? DO you use Steam on the PC? How about digital downloads on the Mac or in general? Give us your thoughts in the comments!

Source: Steam forums