Well, it looks like it’s official: after accidentally leaking the existence of a Mac client in their latest beta, and teasing the same in a series of hysterical promotional images, Valve has announced that the Steam games delivery service will indeed be coming to OS X… along with the sequel to their nabacularly terrific teleportation puzzler, Portal.
According to the April 2010 issue of Game Informer magazine. Portal 2 will be released in the fall of 2010 for the Xbox 360, PC and OS X.
That news in and of itself implies that Steam is coming to the Mac, since Portal requires Steam integration… and according to a TUAW reader who has a copy of the magazine, that’s exactly what Valve is planning, with a May launch underway.
The best part of the announcement, though, is this little gem: “Valve will start a beta program this spring, with a full launch targeted for May […] If you already have a Steam account but want to use it on your brand-new Macbook, for instance, your Steam keys will still work.”
In other words, if you have been using Steam through Boot Camp on your Mac, you’ll be able to download the Mac ports of your Valve games for free. Considering the fact that almost every other software company under the sun sells its OS-specific versions as different products, that’s just totally unexpected… but very, very welcome news indeed. May is shaping up to be the first great gaming month for Mac owners in, well, forever.
