Hints Lead to a Steam Client for Mac OS X

Earlier this week, we posted about Valve’s brand-new Steam beta, which happens to be quite good. It doesn’t add a whole lot in terms of functionality, but it sure looks a heck of a lot prettier (in a good way). But as cool as the latest beta is, it seems there was a secret hidden deep (or not so deep) in the Steam installation folder. Secrets that lead us to believe that a Mac OS X client might be en route.

With brand-new icon files that all begin out with ‘osx_’, it’s fairly difficult to discredit that Valve is obviously up to something. But, although the finding isn’t monumentally shocking, it’s extremely interesting at the same time. If Steam is to come to the Mac, it would be the first time that I ever recall Valve officially supporting a non-Windows OS. But there’s also the question of, what exactly would Steam on Mac OS X offer?

The fact is, non-Windows OSes have a major fault… a lack of games. I guess I should re-phrase… it’s not the fault of the OSes themselves, but the fact that developers don’t want to spend time and effort on any OS that’s not Windows, given Microsoft dominates the market. Then there’s the issue of DirectX not being available on alternative OSes, which is the biggest issue of them all. It’s unfortunate that Microsoft doesn’t open up support for DX on other OSes, but it’s also easy to understand why. If I had a nickel for anytime someone told me, “I’d use <alt OS> if I could game on it.“

So again, the question is… what exactly will Steam on Mac OS X offer? It’s clear that gaming support is growing, but it’s still a far cry from what’s available on Windows. So while Steam on Windows has over 1,000 games, how many games would be available on OS X? Would they be new games? Old games? Would games that are proven to run fine through things like Wine be offered? These are things we must know!

Until the release of the iPhone, Apple didn’t seem to care too much about gaming, and on the desktop side, I’m not quite sure anything has changed. So it’s hard to predict just what’s going to be available… so let the speculation begin! If anything, it’s great to see something like this happen, because gaming really needs to grow on non-Windows OSes, including of course Mac OS X and Linux.

Anyone that tells you ‘Mac OS X is a viable gaming platform!!!’ is obviously deluded. Crazy and deluded. Apple doesn’t make a secret of their distaste for games either — at least on their desktops and laptops. Maybe that’s all about to change though. Maybe, with their new-found love of games on the iPhone and iPod touch, we’re about to see a rebirth of games on Mac OS X… with the help of STEAM!