Gallery: Valve tease Steam/Half-Life/Left 4 Dead for Macs, in style

If you thought Valve's switch from Internet Explorer to WebKit for its new beta version of digital distribution platform Steam -- or the semi-irrefutable hints of OSX compatibility within -- were just coincidence, this morning's latest viral blast should seal the deal. Just days after ramping up a fantastic campaign hinting at new developments with their Portal, the developer let loose a set of images sent not only to games press like RockPaperShotgun and Eurogamer, but MacRumors, as well. With an Apple-logo-emblazoned Gordon Freeman, iPod-ad-silhouetted Team Fortress 2 Heavy, and John Hodgman/Justin Long dual-turret montage, the message is pretty clear. Below is a hi-res collection of all the images released thus far. With their iPhone-esque "dot" navigation at the bottom of each image, there seems to be just one more to go [UPDATE: MacWorld got the final image of Half-Life's Alyx disrupting a version of Apple's classic 1984 ad], and with just days to go to the 2010 Game Developers Conference, we're likely less than a week away from their grand finale.

• [JoeKickass]

  Awesome, I’m a longtime PC gamer so this story doesn’t really affect me one way or another. But its a great campaign.

  For those not familiar with the first image; the red turret (the PC) is from Team Fortress II and is upgradeable, can be customized, and extremely durable (it takes several pipebombs to destroy one). On the other side is the sleek looking white/silver version (the Mac one would suppose) that looks fantastic; its not upgradeable, entirely homogeneous and can be disabled by poking it with a broom. But it looks awesome!

  I love the analogy. Thanks Valve.

  • [Anonymous]

    Actually the white turret is from Portal.

    • [desiredusername]

      And the supercomputer Joe is referring to is from Portal too. GLaDOS.

  • [Blue]

    Ha. And don’t forget that the sleek-looking white turrets try to appear all friendly, speaking to you in a cutesy voice and luring you in, only to turn on you the minute you’re within range!

    Nooo. Nothing like Apple.

• [jayBOT]

  Valves awesome sense of humor shines through again.

• [Myca]

  Hey Joe, you forgot, “… and the red turret takes an engineer to operate.”

  ;-)

  —Myca

  • [JoeKickass]

    …and the white one can only be controlled by a central supercomputer.

• [Myca]

  Or maybe the Linux response, “… and I want to smash both of them with a crowbar.”

• [funnelbc]

  Great news, there’s a good discussion over at Rock Paper Shotgun regarding this http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/03/03/valves-big-fat-hint-steam-for-macs/

  Really happy to see this happen. Valve do such excellent work and it’d be great not to have to boot my pc to play team fortress 2. (Don’t know how much it will cost me in lost productivity though ;) )

• [Zac]

  Eeeeeeeeeeee!

  • [13tales]

    @Zac

    Seconded.

• [Anonymous]

  Joe..
  That white one is from Portal….

• [delt664]

  Portal Turret – Shiny, white, easy to knock over, form over function

  TF2 Turret – Useful for fragging, upgradeable, repairable in the field, compatible with other devices, function over form.

  Yeah, I think valve got it right.

• [grphiw]

  Not to mention that Apple is apparently represented by a turret that uses a little girl’s voice to draw you in…

• [Anonymous]

  I just wonder what percentage of the take Valve will have to fork over to apple?

• [tad604]

  As a recent convert to Mac (at home) I’m kind of excited I might actually play games on the computer again. I like my xbox 360 and my favorite game(s) are l4d. I even shelled out money for the pc version just to play with the level editors. Although having to dual boot into windows to use it, means I forget about it often. I hope they port the sdk/dev tools to the mac version. I also hope I don’t have to re-buy the game (a third time).

• [13tales]

  DON’T TOY WITH MY FEELINGS LIKE THIS VALVE :@

  …I’ve been hurt before.

  Seriously, Mac compatible Steam would be fucking awesome. My money’s on a partial port or compatibility wrapper for the Source engine that’ll allow all the Valve games to run, if not the other games on the service. Even better would be a compatbility wrapper built-in to the Steam client (maybe a Crossover Games style development of WINE or similar?) that would run almost all Steam games, but I can’t see other publishers letting it happen.

• [Anonymous]

  But you can’t sap the Portal sentry. (Which is only because Portal sentries aren’t nearly as popular.)