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Steam coming to Mac?

ZiggyPastorius said:
I, for one, hope so. I enjoy playing Counter Strike, but nothing annoys me more than slow crossover and fusion gaming.
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I just got my Macbook Pro a few days ago. Im a fresh Mac user, and just came off the Windows boat (yay). In what ways does Crossover slow down? I have Counter-Strike Source installed on Windows XP, but would like a better alternative than using Bootcamp just to play a game.
 
Don't get your hopes up, though it's clearly possible. With both OS X and *nix using OpenGL, and both platforms growing, more games will be ported or even written for them. But it could take a while.
 
Lord Blackadder said:
Don't get your hopes up, though it's clearly possible. With both OS X and *nix using OpenGL, and both platforms growing, more games will be ported or even written for them. But it could take a while.
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indeed and there was an article awhile back in which one of the head guys at steam was a bit biased against OS X for various reasons, so it does seem unlikely, unless they're looking for new markets.
 
I personally think we will see a day when all the major game releases make it to OpenGL platforms. But I also think that could be as long as 10+ years away. It mostly depends on the growth of OS X and *nix versus Windows. More marketshare equals more developers on board.

One interesting point is that Bootcamp doesn't seem to have hurt Apple software sales - in fact quite the opposite. So the future of gaming on the Mac does look bright in the long run.
 
Lord Blackadder said:
I personally think we will see a day when all the major game releases make it to OpenGL platforms. But I also think that could be as long as 10+ years away. It mostly depends on the growth of OS X and *nix versus Windows. More marketshare equals more developers on board.

One interesting point is that Bootcamp doesn't seem to have hurt Apple software sales - in fact quite the opposite. So the future of gaming on the Mac does look bright in the long run.
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yes bootcamp has actually only helped the mac platform.

OpenGL certainly has growth, but its also limited by the hardware that Apple uses at times, which is a shame.

i think we'll see more developers on board not only because of marketshare, but also because of declining gaming sales for the desktop market as more and more people switch to consoles; the desktop companies will have to expand their markets where they can to get more revenue, and that means Linux and Mac machines too.

it'll certainly take time though and won't happen overnight.
 
I wonder what this will entail. There are hundreds of games on Steam, are they all going to be ported?
Will we be able to access our current Steam accounts on the Mac version? I've spent around £150 on Steam - I'm not prepared to spend that again.
 
It wouldn't be too hard to port steam over to Intel Macs. Pretty much of all EA's games use TransGaming's Cider to port games such as Battlefield 2142 and Command and Conquer 3. Steam already runs decently (As well as Steam Engine-Powered games) in Crossover/Crossover Games. With the help of Valve performance, integration, and quality could be greatly improved.
 
Well the article doesn't say all steam games, just source, as that was devolped by valve, and steam now has loads of other developers games available, so maybe not all you £150 will work.....
 
Ah, well the title said Steam :D

Source alone would be good, just to be able to play TF2 without rebooting (which only takes about a minute anyways).
 
Nathan Dailo said:
I just got my Macbook Pro a few days ago. Im a fresh Mac user, and just came off the Windows boat (yay). In what ways does Crossover slow down? I have Counter-Strike Source installed on Windows XP, but would like a better alternative than using Bootcamp just to play a game.
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It's just slower than running it boot camp, because you're doing it through another program (crossover). I'd say give the trial of Crossover a try and play. It doesn't play horribly, so you shouldn't have any problems, but you might as well decide yourself whether it's acceptable.

And yeah, I understand where you're coming from. I desperately want to play Guild Wars and occasionally Steam games, but I won't pay for Crossover (it will only run Steam, not Guild Wars for me, and it's slower than just installing XP) or Fusion (way too slow), because I can't afford that just for two games, and I'm too lazy/I don't want XP on my computer for the boot camp method. It's completely my fault, but, oh well :)
 
I have a steam account and I mainly use it on my PC.

I bought crossover and I tried running left for dead 2 on my mac from steam using crossover but when it installs it gets to 1% then fails. This is the only game I have had any problems with is it my mac or crossover?
 
not gonna happen
not even in your dreams
even if it happened not many games will be released as in windows, so u might see only the most wanted games available only :eek:
 
alam said:
not gonna happen
not even in your dreams
even if it happened not many games will be released as in windows, so u might see only the most wanted games available only :eek:
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pretty much; all the indy games just won't have enough money to develop for mac and pc at the same time.

I also remember that there was speculation (which was not entirely unreasoned) that companies are throwing less money into developing PC (in the broad sense of that term) games, and more inclined to develop console games because PC games are much easier to pirate.

Thus it does not seem that steam will be ported to mac, or if it does, the majority of the titles on steam will not be released on Mac, rendering it useless and not worth Valve's resources.

I don't see the point in doing it anyways, considering that bootcamp works well enough, and I use steam on my Win 7 partition and it works really well. I'm not even really looking forward to (i'm not opposed to it i suppose...) steam being released on OS X
 
Steam sucks, sure I would like to see those valve games but having to run steams to get them just sucks sucks sucks. Did I say Steam sucks? because it does.
 
Dont Hurt Me said:
Steam sucks, sure I would like to see those valve games but having to run steams to get them just sucks sucks sucks. Did I say Steam sucks? because it does.
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I'd love to hear why you think Steam sucks. Please explain.
 
Dont Hurt Me said:
Steam sucks, sure I would like to see those valve games but having to run steams to get them just sucks sucks sucks. Did I say Steam sucks? because it does.
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Steam is purely amazing. I loose my disks all the time or scratch them. With steam, I can re-download a game anywhere I am. Lurve it!
 
they hopefully will do steam on mac soon, they would earn 10x more money.

but the thing about mac is that it's hard to upgrade to follow up on new hard grafics and so on games, .. as i know it
 
MasterDev said:
Steam is purely amazing. I loose my disks all the time or scratch them. With steam, I can re-download a game anywhere I am. Lurve it!
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For me it's all about preloading games, unified friends list, getting cheap games, being able to play both offline and online with the only DRM that seems to work and isn't restrictive, (legal) access to old games that I missed out on.

I bought Bioshock last year for £3.50 on Steam, L4D1 for £15 and recently loads of my friends bought up TF2 when it dropped to £2.50. It doesn't get much better than that!
 
raggedjimmi said:
I'd love to hear why you think Steam sucks. Please explain.
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Its protection schemes are horrible, its customer service even worse. Had several episodes where it wouldnt allow me to reopen my account on a new system or after reinstalling Windblows and then would only get automated responses to my requests. Steam sucks but Halflife2 is great go figure. Ill make do with Mac gaming as long as we get things like BioShock, ETQW, Flatout2 etc etc. Steam will Steam you sooner or later.
 
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