14 DAY TRIAL // In March, Softpedia informed its readers that, after weeks of speculation, Valve had officially announced plans to bring its Steam gaming service (and the Source gaming engine), to the Mac. The first games confirmed as coming to OS X were Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series.
TUAW now reports that forum "sleuths" over at steampowered.com have put together a list of "What we think/know about Steam for Mac," which offers new information about the upcoming release.
According to Mangr0v3, who has been active on the forums since September 2008 with roughly 7,700 posts, Steam for Mac will require Mac OS X 10.5 or higher, while source games will only run on Mac OS X 10.5.8 or higher (Leopard), and Mac OS X 10.6.3 or higher (Snow Leopard). More noteworthy observations from the poster can be found below.
"- 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. 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.
- 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[s] 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.
- (Some?) games will require the Windows Media Components for QuickTime.
- Mac games will get their own category automatically.
- The Steam Store may sell Mac-exclusive games.
- It will not be released on Monday the 26th, but will come later. GameInformer allegedly pins the release to May, despite Valve announcing April.
- 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."
As far as the closed beta is concerned, Mangr0v3 claims that testing is well underway with beta participants communicating their progress to Valve via a mailing list, and asks that users "do not post links to or workarounds for the leaked Mac Beta client." Other noteworthy aspects, according to the same forum "sleuth," include:
"- Only those in the beta can log in to the Mac beta client. - The only game Beta participants can play is Mac Portal (AppID 52003). - Beta participants have been automatically signed up to the mailing list."
Finally, a list of titles known to be hitting Mac OS X soon is provided. The games are Counter-Strike (presumably Source); "The Half-Life Series;" Left 4 Dead; Left 4 Dead 2; Portal; Portal 2 (upcoming); Team Fortress 2. One game that has been only semi-confirmed (as in hinted at) is Killing Floor, the post reveals.