Apple’s never been really serious about Mac gaming… which makes it all the more miraculous that we’re currently living in a golden age of Mac gaming, largely through the efforts of Valve Software to bring native ports of their Source engine games as well as the Steam digital delivery service to OS X.
But now Valve is doing one better. They’ve just announced that they’ll be sharing a lot of their graphics code for the Mac with developers on Steam, which they characterize as the hardest work of bringing a title to the Mac.
Valve’s a great company, but they aren’t doing this out of sheer benevolence: as it turns out, even old Steam games released for the Mac have seen 15-20% sales bumps across all platforms, and that number’s only going to rise. That means more money in Valve’s pockets. There’s huge money in Mac gaming, and even if Apple is mysteriously unwilling to capitalize upon that, it’s good to know that savvy developers like Valve know a good opportunity when they see it.
[via TUAW]
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.
