Valve has put recent speculation to rest by confirming that its gaming platform Steam and gaming engine Source will become available to Mac computers.
The announcement further bolsters Apple's credentials as a serious player in the gaming arena - a marketplace in which its iPod touch and iPhone have seen rapid success, and its Intel-powered Mac OS X computers continue to slowly catch up to the dominant platform; Microsoft's Windows.
Steam for Mac, scheduled to become available in April, will make the world's largest digital game distribution service available to Mac users. At launch, it will offer a number of games built using Valve's Source engine, including Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the hugely-popular Half-Life series.
Valve has confirmed that its Mac implementation of the Steamworks development and publishing suite will support all existing Steamworks APIs, as well as an added feature dubbed Steam Play. Scheduled to become available on launch day, Steam Play will allow users who purchase a game for Mac or Windows to play the game on the other platform at no extra cost. Furthermore, the Steam Play API will allow developers the option to store save games on the Steam Cloud, allowing "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".
Gabe Newell, president of Valve, commented on the announcement by referring to the Mac as "a great platform for entertainment services".
Echoing his comments, director of Steam development John Cook adds that Valve is "treating the Mac as a tier-1 platform so all of our future games will release simultaneously on Windows, Mac, and the Xbox 360."
"Mac and Windows players will be part of the same multiplayer universe, sharing servers, lobbies, and so forth," adds Cook in a statement in which he makes no mention of the PlayStation 3 - a platform that has historically been snubbed by Valve.
Valve's first gaming title released simultaneously for both Mac and Windows platforms is expected to be Portal 2 in Q4 2010.
