On Wednesday, Valve announced the release of several blockbuster titles now available for download on their Steam gaming service. The collection this week includes the epic sci-fi shooter Half-Life 2 as well as its expansions Half Life: Episode One and Episode Two.
Additionally, Valve announced that Eve Online: Tyrannis will be available for download on Steam for both the Mac and PC, making it the first cross-platform title to launch simultaneously on Steam.
According to Valve’s press release, “The Half-Life 2 titles available now feature cross-platform support for Steam Cloud, allowing players to save their game progress on one computer, then seamlessly resume from that save point on another computer” on the Mac or PC. Trying to get past that tough part in the Citadel? Well with Steam Cloud, you can resume that game from wherever you want.
Fans of fragging head crabs and Combine soldiers will appreciate the forty new Steam Achievements available in Half-Life 2 and Episode One. All three HL2 games support Steam Play, enabling players to buy the game once and play it on any computer that has downloaded Steam (Mac or PC).
With Portal launching for Steam on the Mac earlier this month, Half-Life 2 is now the second major Valve franchise to be released on the Mac. Counterstrike: Source, Team Fortress 2, and Left 4 Dead 2 are still listed as “to be released.” We’ve been playing Team Fortress 2 in the closed beta for some time now, and so there was speculation that the distinct team-based first person shooter would be the next game to be released to Steam on the Mac. Half-Life 2’s announcement is a welcome surprise, only now we’re itching to get back to the Badlands and snipe, shoot, and explode each other in frenetic multiplayer combat. How about it, Valve?
Now for perhaps the best news of all: to celebrate the launch of Valve’s best-known series, all Half-Life 2 titles are available for 30 percent off their regular price for a limited time. So grab a gravity gun and get to it, Mac gamers.
In other Steam-related news, Valve has taken to heart users’ complaints regarding the location of where their Steam content is downloaded onto their computer. Valve admits they initially chose to put the content in the Documents folder because it was visible and often used, but users have complained that this interferes with their backup plans with Time Machine especially.
To address this issue, Valve is working on a new way to uninstall your Steam files simply and efficiently. “We are working adding a feature to Steam to detect when you drag it to the Trash, and ask you if you want to delete your game content files as well.” Valve also explains that they have a long-term goal of allowing players choose where game content files are located, but for now this hopefully will be a short-term fix.