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Valve teases a Mac release of Half-Life, Portal, Team Fortress 2

by Mike Schramm Mar 3rd 2010 at 3:30PM

Even I was dubious about the rumor the other day of Steam coming to the Mac, but now here's something straight from Valve hinting that it might actually happen. MacRumors got an image of Half-Life's Gordon Freeman via email... with an Apple logo on his chest. MacNN got another picture, this one showing turrets from Portal and Team Fortress 2 parodying the "I'm a Mac" ads. And Shacknews got a third, with the Heavy from TF2 eating a sandwich shaped like an Apple logo in a parody of the iPod dancing ads.

Oh Lordy. Looks like Valve is planning to make a Mac announcement, and while it might not be quite as far-reaching as bringing the whole platform over, they might as well start with all of their blockbuster games. It's also possible that this is related to the secret message hunt going on the PC version of Portal, which itself seemed to be hinting at an announcement of Portal 2 or even the long-awaited Half-Life 3.

Whatever the announcement, it looks like Valve will have something to tell us at GDC next week. I'll be there with ears open -- if we hear that Valve is bringing some or all of their catalog to our platform, you'll be the first to know.

Update: Our game-obsessed friends at Joystiq have gotten copies of five of the images (there appear to be six total, according to the dots on the image above), and you can see them all in the gallery below. The rest of the images show the Steam platform itself, and Francis from Left 4 Dead. Awesome.

Update 2: Looks like Macworld got the last image. You hurt us, Valve. But we still love you anyway -- how can we not after seeing that "rest of us" ad parody for Steam below?

Gallery: Valve Mac faux ads



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Even I was dubious about the rumor the other day of Steam coming to the Mac, but now here's something straight from Valve hinting that it...
 

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nolan

Counter-terrorist win?

March 04 2010 at 11:06 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Andrei

Steam is for games what iTunes is for music. Perhaps Valve will initially port their source engine games to OSX(Valve titles) but for those of you that have additional steam games(not Valve) do not hope to be able to play them natively on OSX as well. It is up for the developer to create a platform agnostic game and not for the publisher/distributer (in this case Valve with their Steam). Anyway Valve's attention towards the OSX will definitely have some sway over the future of MAC compatible games.

March 04 2010 at 7:15 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
superberg

This is really great, and I appreciate that Valve is bringing some great games to the mac.

But maybe they need to take a look at this comic:
http://xkcd.com/606/

I mean, come on. I'll probably pick up Portal for Mac, but can we get something that's come out in the past few years?

March 04 2010 at 12:07 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to superberg's comment
Shunnabunich

Well, Valve *is* still using the Source engine to make new games. There's L4D2, at least. Hopefully other devs will come on board as a result of this move.

March 04 2010 at 1:53 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Shunnabunich

This is good news IF they're doing an honest-to-God native port of the Source engine, and not going anywhere near Cider.

That said, these are hands-down the best Apple spoofs I've ever seen, because they mean so much themselves. My favourites are the "1984" one with Alyx, followed by the turret one. (I wonder what they were thinking of when they designed the Aperture turret? Yeah.) This could be one of the most exciting things, or biggest disappointments, ever to hit the Mac platform. Knowing Valve, I can't help but hope it's the former.

March 03 2010 at 7:14 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Shunnabunich's comment
Oboewan

I'm partial to the Heavy silhouette one myself.
It does seem like whoever made these is a huge Apple fan, and their job posting was looking for experienced *nix developers, so I'm feeling optimistic.

March 03 2010 at 8:09 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Paul Herz

I had a mini heart-attack when I read this. Good Lord, I've been waiting for this forever!

March 03 2010 at 7:13 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
rmwb

Interesting timing... I'm thinking maybe iPad games...

March 03 2010 at 6:52 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Liquidmark

Um, kinda late to the game Valve.

You were talking crap about Mac users that wanted to play your games a couple years ago and wanted to charge Aspyr a ton-o-cash for a license to port.

Sorry, not interested in your table scraps Valve.

March 03 2010 at 6:32 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
moo

I hope I can download games for Mac that I already bought in Bootcamp for PC. You think they'll allow that?

March 03 2010 at 5:36 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Tom Craft

This is awesome and so very huge for gaming on the Mac. This could be THE shot in the arm the Mac needs to get gaming seriously looked at on our side. Freakin' Sweet!

March 03 2010 at 5:33 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Mark

Dammit. I just bought Portal for Windows on Steam this morning.

March 03 2010 at 5:30 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Mark's comment
Gaz Beirne

Hopefully it'll be a buy-once-for-all-platforms type deal.

March 03 2010 at 5:36 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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