Valve Software’s incredible Steam platform came to OS X last year after years of Windows exclusivity, and as far as I’m concerned ushered in a refreshing new era in OS X gaming, in which Mac gamers were afforded all the same perks on our platform as Windows gamers have long taken for granted on theirs.
It looks like Valve’s love for Apple might not stop at OS X, though. Valve is now apparently looking into expanding Steam into iOS.
According to a gamer who recently dropped by Valve’s offices, during which time Valve honcho Gabe Newell dropped word that they were looking into expanding Steam to iOS and Android.
It’s hard to say what form Steam would take on iOS. Certainly, it wouldn’t work as it does on OS X, as a digital delivery platform: Apple’s locked that down tight. More likely, it would bring Steam’s social networking features to iOS, or bake Steam achievements into iOS and Android games (a la Game Center or OpenFeint).
Too bad they likely can’t do more. Frankly, I’d live to see some of their more advanced Steam functionality on iOS. Imagine if Steam for iOS could sync your saved games and settings between multiple iOS devices, as the desktop client can do, or even if Steam Play came to iOS, allowing you to buy a game once on your iPhone and also have access to it on Android.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
20 responses to “Valve Is Working On Bringing Steam To iOS”
Dreams of playing TF2 on my Iphone dances in my head…..
Ug… I can hardly rocket jump by mouse and keyboard, I don’t want to try on touch based faked analog sticks. Now the social features, that would be good. Steam voice, IM, and other “steam layer” status stuff would be sweet to off load to my i-device. Although getting a mobile version of the Steam engine itself for developers to port to would be neato. Honestly though, with Apple being a little bitch with “real” names for “friends” in Game Center, I’d be happy to see Valve show them how to “do it right”. It’d also be cool if Valve could use that cloud sync for Steam enabled iOS games to sync save game data. Which again would show Apple “how to do it right”.
the steam play feature that syncs your game progress would work on iOS. You’d just have to buy the game twice
I would love to see them bringing cloudsync.
And really, there is no reason why the wouldn’t be able to, galaxy on fire 2 have a cloud syncing save spot.
unless it’s universal of course.
I was wondering when they were going to do this. Being able to purchase games on your iOS device and have them download on your PC or Mac at home would be great. Being able to chat with those on your friends list would also be a huge plus.
I get the feeling that this is just going to be a chat/voice chat app…
How about they fix the mac client first before they work on clients for other platforms? The mac client still performs horribly.
This doesn’t sound good. If you can buy games threw Steam on the iOS platform doesn’t the transaction go threw Itunes? Doesn’t Itunes get a cut? Steam also couldn’t have different prices one from the ios and one from your desktop.
Personally I think they should bring out Half life 2: Episode 3 before they bring anything else out.