Valve's Steam Software for Mac: A Review

Official website: http://store.steampowered.com/

Steam is a software program that acts as a digital video game store offering hundreds of titles. Steam was created in 2004 by Valve, most well known for their Half-Life series of games as a way to securely sell digital copies of Valve games. A user community exists within Steam that allows people to join their friends in multiplayer games as well as track stats and accomplishments in games. As it grew, other publishers began to use Steam as a way to sell their games.

All games purchased are downloaded to the user's Steam account and computer. In addition games can be played on multiple computers as long as the user has the free Steam software installed and a free Steam account. Think of Steam as a type of internet cloud for games.

In 2010 Valve made a move that was huge for the gaming world by releasing Steam for Mac. Before this Steam was a PC (or Windows) only program as most video games are made for Windows computers. You may have known that for years Mac computers were not known for their gaming. However once Apple began putting discrete graphics in their line of computers, enabling more potential for gaming, it was only a matter of time before a big game company got involved.

Look:

The Steam for Mac software looks basically like the Windows version with game library, store, community, and media links. A pop up displays the latest Steam sales and events and the store front has announcements about the latest games released. A new tab labeled "Mac" is available to show only Mac compatible Steam games. A Mac Apple logo appears next to compatible titles.

Valve also designed the look of Steam to mimic a Mac based program with attention to fonts, graphics, and clean edges.

Game selection:

Steam continues to be updated with new games for the Mac, although most of these titles are older PC games that are just now being ported over to the Mac OS X operating system. Games such as Half Life, Portal, Civilization, and World of Goo are some of the more well known titles available for Mac through Steam.

The selection is still tiny compared to the number of titles for Windows. Also the number of "brand new" games for Mac, as opposed to converted old game, is very low.

Cross platform usage:

Valve added a "Steam play" option to the software. Games with the Steam play logo next to them can be purchased on Steam via either Mac or Windows and played through a Steam account on either system.

In addition since games played over the Steam network are run through Steam's servers, both Mac users and Windows users can play together in the same game without being on the same operating system. No longer does one need Windows to play with friends on Steam.

A key disadvantage is that if you own a Steam game on Windows and it isn't yet ported over to Mac you can still see the game in your game library on the Mac side but can not play it without Windows.

Stability:

Steam is known for its fast connections with users getting download speeds on purchases and updates nearing 900 megabytes per second in some cases.

For the Mac software this holds true and the links and options in the program operate relatively quickly and smoothly.

Freezes and crashes are minimal and as of this writing the software for Mac is less than a month old. It is likely the bugs will be worked out and stability will improve.

Overall:

For those who already use Steam and own a Mac this is a great piece of software. It limits the need to have to boot up Windows on your Mac to play games.

It isn't yet a complete substitute for Steam on Windows due to most games still being a Windows only deal. Over time you'll likely see more and more titles converted to the Mac side and maybe even see brand new games coming to Mac at the same time as Windows.

The move to Mac is a big one for sure and one that will change the world of computer based gaming. Since the software is free and Steam often runs free play weekends and even free game downloads, it is worth a try for those who game and own a Mac.