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Forums - PC - Steam And Valve Games Coming To MAC!!!

jefforange89 on 04 March 2010

Well, if you buy a multiplat game for your PS3, you aren't entitled to play it on your 360 as well for free, so I don't really see why Valve would give you both versions here together.

But you never know I guess.



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FaRmLaNd on 04 March 2010

@jefforange89

Blizzard does it. Their games have both version on the disk.



greenmedic88 on 04 March 2010

WoW is the only Blizzard game I know of that does this. Considering that the game is essentially free and that their revenue comes from subscription fees, it makes plenty of sense for Blizzard to have one retail installation package for distribution among cross platforms.



Hobson on 04 March 2010

I hope the Mac players can play with the PC players.

Would be fun to do some TF2 with my mac buddies.



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ameratsu on 04 March 2010
greenmedic88 said:
WoW is the only Blizzard game I know of that does this. Considering that the game is essentially free and that their revenue comes from subscription fees, it makes plenty of sense for Blizzard to have one retail installation package for distribution among cross platforms.

 

Wasn't The Sims 3 the same as well? The same version could be installed on either Windows or OSX. here, look

Going by the pictures that Valve released, source engine games are going to work with OSX. What isn't clear is if any re-purchasing will be required or how well they will run. Hopefully it'll be one common list across both platforms, but only games you own that are compatible will show up in OSX. If Valve finds success here it may encourage some other developers on steam to make their games available for both windows and osx.



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famousringo on 04 March 2010
greenmedic88 said:
WoW is the only Blizzard game I know of that does this. Considering that the game is essentially free and that their revenue comes from subscription fees, it makes plenty of sense for Blizzard to have one retail installation package for distribution among cross platforms.

I remember Diablo 2 was hybrid. So was Warcraft 3. I can't remember if Warcraft 2 was or not, but at some point, making their release discs Mac/PC hybrid became standard policy with Blizzard, and there were a few other companies doing hybrid releases around that time.

I'm really going to need a link before I believe that Apple takes royalties on any software sold on the Mac platform. I've never seen this suggested anywhere else before, and I've tried to find any evidence of it with Google and come up empty. Mac games retail for more simply because they're a very small market, and the porting houses have to pay the bills.



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Kasz216 on 04 March 2010
greenmedic88 said:
Because the Mac OS is a different platform than PC. If you look at retail Mac games you'll notice two things. One, they usually cost more than their PC counterparts. Two, they usually don't drop in price the way PC games do in a relatively short amount of time. Usually, they stay at $50 or whatever the original MSRP was.

While I'm not sure how they handle game development for the Mac OS, I believe Apple does receive some sort of royalty fee for games sold for their platform. It was like that in the past, don't know about now.

When you pay for licensed software, usually, but not always, it's for the specific platform you purchased it for.

All Adobe software for instance is platform specific. You pay for Photoshop CS, you either buy Windows or Mac. You don't get a license for both. I wish you did since I bought the Production Premium bundle for Windows and would like to also install it on my MBP, but you don't get a free lunch from Adobe.

Autodesk is one creative content software company that does offer dual licenses on many of its applications like Maya, but this is very generous IMO and not a given that they have to do this.

Now if Valve wants to be very generous and give its customers free licenses for the Mac counterparts of games they already have in their PC lists; great. All Hail Valve. I'm just not expecting it because when you buy a PC version of a game and you want to play it on a Mac, you either have to buy the Mac version of the game, or play it through Windows using Boot Camp or any of the other utilities that allow you to run Windows on a Mac (a lot of PC users seem to gloss over this feature).

A lot of that is irrelevent when it comes to digital distribution... and exactly why it would make sense to do that in the long term to make money.

Also, if videogame companies actually have to pay Apple a Liscensing fee.... well that's just bullshit.

 

The amount of people who are going to go out of their way and by for both platforms is infintesimal.  If they did so on digital distribution platforms the good publicity and increased sales people got would far outway the minor gains they could get otherwise.



Alic0004 on 04 March 2010
Kasz216 said:
Well that's neat.

Valve makes some of the best... My question... will the games "transfer".

Probably not. That is to say, if I log into my steam account on a Mac... can i download TF2 on it... or does it just cover the Windows version.

That would be amazing.



 

Kasz216 on 04 March 2010
jefforange89 said:
Well, if you buy a multiplat game for your PS3, you aren't entitled to play it on your 360 as well for free, so I don't really see why Valve would give you both versions here together.

But you never know I guess.

Because it's a great marketing tool.  It's unlikely many people would buy both copies... and a digital distribution copy pretty much costs you nada if it's one that isn't going to be purchased anyway.


Think about it this way.  Say you can either buy Team Fortress 3 on steam... or in retail.  They're both the same price.   Most people are going to buy retail just because there are fewer positives going digitial distribution then retail... and they don't knock anything off the front end of the price.


However now... they make it so you can play it both on PC and MAC.  Not only that but unlike if you bought one version at retail, then the other when it was like 5 dollars (like you can find now for TF2)... your progress and steam cloud info works on both games.

 

Big incentive to buy Digital Distribution and for Vave to bank that extra 15-20 dollar retail margin.



greenmedic88 on 04 March 2010

They don't charge more for Mac ports of PC games, but it does seem to be a trend that the prices stay the same long after the PC versions are available at bargain prices. Even worse is the fact that most Mac ports show up significantly later than the original PC release.

I haven't used the Mac platform for gaming in years because of this.

If Valve offers dual licensing for their games to promote Steam for Mac, like I said; great. It benefits me since I already own most of their games on PC Steam. I'm just not expecting free ports and anyone who thinks Steam for Mac means you'll get all your games for PC on Mac for nothing may be setting themselves up for disappointment.

Valve could do this for their own IPs, but I don't see all other publishers throwing in free Mac versions of their games to PC customers unless they really feel like doing Apple a big favor for nothing (if they don't receive anything for porting games to Mac OS from PC customers) to help them sell the Mac as a gaming platform to current PC users.