Open the Valves: Steam For Macs Launches on May 12th

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Valve Software–the game development house responsible for classics like Half-Life 2, Team Fortress and Portal–shifted the axis of game distribution when they launched their Steam digital delivery platform in 2002. Since then, Steam’s become an additional distribution channel for big publishers as well as a place for small indie developers to find an audience.

Valve recently announced their plans to bring Steam to Mac, calling it the “biggest event in Steam’s history.” Valve execs have said that their aim is to show that there’s a thriving community of gamers on Mac OS X. Come May 12th, Mac users will be able to take advantage of the package deals and game mods that PC owners have loved for years now.

Pre-existing Steam accounts will be able to use the new Mac client via the new Steam Play protocol, which will honor the same user info from either platform.

This is joyous news to Mac gamers such as myself. One of the reasons I’m primarily a console gamer is because I never had access to souped –up Windows machines in high school and college. I’m looking forward to grabbing stuff like Plain Sight or Beat Hazard once it goes live.