For an explanation of how May 12th is in April, see Valve Time.

Back in March I wrote about the confirmation that Valve was releasing a Steam client for Mac, with the anticipation that it would arrive in April.

Since then there was a closed beta test, which was supposed to have closed sign-ups but got leaked and … well, turned out to be a bit of a mess for a bit for those who were actually invited (who are supposed to still be under NDA so I’m surprised at some of what I’ve been reading!).

Last night Valve announced that the Mac client will release on April May 12th, as reported at Macworld … and loads of other places. The announcement itself was shorter enough to be a Steve Jobs email reply:

Valve today announced the public release of Steam for the Mac is May 12. Please stay tuned for more information.

For those who already are Steam users, there has been a massive amount of ongoing discussion on the Steam forums about this. Here is a summary of what they are saying:

What we think/know about Steam for Mac
* It will require Mac OS X 10.5 or higher.
* Source games for Mac will require Mac OS X 10.5.8 or higher (Leopard), or 10.6.3 or higher (Snow Leopard).
* It will be Intel only, PowerPC will not be supported.
* Source games will not run are not supported on the X3100 or 900-series Intel chipsets. [1]
An anonymous source in the Beta program told me that while the X3100 and 900-series GMAs are not officially supported, you can still run Mac Portal, and get 10-15 FPS on lowest settings on the X3100.
* Steam Play mean that you do not need to purchase separate Windows and Mac versions of the same game. Implementation will probably depend on the publisher.. The Steam Play icon will look like this.
* The Steam Overlay will require “Enable access for assistive devices” checked in System Preferences -> Universal Access [2]
* (Some?) games will require the Windows Media Components for Quicktime [2]
* Mac games will get their own category automatically. [3]
* The Steam Store may sell Mac-exclusive games. [4]
* It will not be released on Monday the 26th, but will come later. GameInformer allegedly pins the release to May [5], despite Valve announcing April.
Kotaku announced today that they recieved word from Valve that Steam for Mac will be released May 12th. [6]
* Steam and Source will run natively, not through Wine/Cider/Crossover/etc.
* Source will run on OpenGL.
* Mac OS X will be treated “as a tier-1 platform”.
* Mac OS X and Windows users will play on the same servers, join the same lobbies, etc.
* The first Steam client for Mac OS X will be the same as the Steam version to be released on April 26th.

Regarding the Beta
* The closed Beta is now underway.
* Beta participants are communicating with Valve via a mailing list.
* Only those in the beta can log in to the Mac beta client.
* Please do not post links to or workarounds for the leaked Mac Beta client.
* The only game Beta participants can play is Mac Portal (AppID 52003)
* Beta participants will be able to test Counter-Strike: Source and Half-Life 2 shortly. [7]
* If you were invited to the Beta, you would know, as it appears (thank you Twitter) that Beta participants have been automatically signed up to the mailing list.
* Release appears very close, with dylibs (Mac OS X library files) appearing in the Team Fortress 2 and Day of Defeat: Source GCFs after today’s Orange Box engine update. (They may be in other games, I haven’t checked yet.) [8]

Regarding Mods
* The Source SDK, including the OpenGL Source codebase, will be coming to Mac OS X. [9]
* Non-binary Mods (Mods which are just map packs, skins, etc.) should work on day 1. (E.g Portal: Prelude)
* Mods which use custom binaries will need to be ported to Mac. (E.g. Dystopia)
* Mod(erator)s are fearsome.

Regarding Games
Steam coming to Mac OS X does not magically make your games run on Mac OS X.

The following games have been confirmed for Mac OS X:
* Counter-Strike (presumably Source)
* “The Half-Life Series”
* Left 4 Dead
* Left 4 Dead 2
* Portal
* Portal 2 (upcoming)
* Team Fortress 2
* Madballs in…Babo:Invasion [10]

The following games have been semi-confirmed (teased/hinted) for Mac OS X:
* Killing Floor [11]

The numbers in brackets reference other posts in the thread.

The one that made me chuckle was this:

Steam coming to Mac OS X does not magically make your games run on Mac OS X.

This is an important clarification for a couple of reasons: it is a reminder that someone has to do the work to make the game cross-compatible using Steamworks; also that in the many cases where there already exist Mac & PC version of a game with the PC version on Steam(The Path, Unreal, Plants vs. Zombies, Dragon Age), there is no assurance that the Mac version of those games will be available on Steam.

It is also worth mentioning because once it was known that the beta had started, someone (naturally) leaked the beta disk image to the various pirating sites (and we wonder why there is such draconian DRM?), prompting folks to try to get it running on their Mac without a beta account … and winding up with some chucklehead making the following comment:

WTF steam!! just dl ur proggie (hehe) and none of my game shows up? WTF? I follow ur post and not work! FAIL!!!

Um … yeah. Apparently with the Steam client ‘dmg’ file you could install and get past the warnings about not having an account, but since the only game released as part of the beta was Portal and it had to be specifically enabled in your Steam account, getting the beta client itself was of little use.

My editorial comment is this … as a gamer who loves both Mac & PC systems, I regularly take and see loads of crap on websites and forums about the Mac not being a game system, that anyone wanting a *real* gaming system should be on Windows anyway. And yet this whole ‘Steam on Mac’ thing has completely lit up the interwebs. Curiouser and curiouser …

Source: Macworld