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Steam For Mac private beta suggests May release date

2010-04-27-steamValve Software announced last month that their Steam gaming platform would be available for Mac by the end of April, or possibly May.  Although it hasn’t hit wide release yet, it has been in a closed beta for a few weeks.  There’s an exhaustive thread running on the Steam forums, which suggests that a May launch day is likely.  Valve’s official word is still “coming soon”.

Steam itself will require OS X 10.5 or higher, while Valve Source games will required Leopard, or Snow Leopard to run.  You can also forget about PowerPC support (not surprising), and Source games will use OpenGL.

More details:

First, you can catch some screen shots of the Steam for Mac interface at MacStories

and some features, garnered from the Steam forum thread:

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.
  • 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.

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3 thoughts on “Steam For Mac private beta suggests May release date

  1. Thedutchjelle

    May 5th is never suggested. It’s a footnote! It’s just “May” with the [5] being the reference.

    1. Thanks! I’ve corrected the post. I need to fire the editor! 🙂

  2. […] a couple of days after speculating that the Mac version of Steam looks like it’s going to miss the initial […]

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