Valve Corporation released the Mac version of their digital distribution platform, Steam, last May 12th. This lets Mac owners download and play hit titles such as Half-Life, Team Fortress and Left 4 Dead natively on their machines.
To help celebrate the release of Steam for the Mac, Valve offered one of their acclaimed games as a free download. Portal, cited as one of the most original games in 2007 and has won 70 Game of the Year awards, is free to download by PC and Mac users.
You read it right.
Portal is FREE for both the Windows and Mac platforms. However, this offer is only good until May 24, 2010. That’s less than a week to go.
For Mac users, you have to download the Steam client first before you can start downloading Portal. Though the client is only a 2.8MB small, running it for the first time will prompt you to download an additional 33MB update.
Once I had Steam running, I had to create an account before I could start downloading Portal. Since I was new to the client, it took me a rather long time to figure out what was happening. I repeatedly went back to the “Portal is Free” page and clicked on the “Get Portal Now” image which resulted to the Steam client launching or being brought into the foreground. After being frustrated for a couple of minutes, I realized that Steam acted as a conduit for downloading and playing games. Doh! It took me a couple of more clicking in Steam to find out that Portal was already downloading. I found the download in progress at Library > Downloads.
I really can’t give an estimate on how long it took me to download Portal. The client downloaded 20 to 25% of the game while I was trying to figure out what was going on and the rest was downloaded when I left my MacBook Pro to download to game for an entire night.
The client has crashed a few times and I had to Force Quit on a number of occasions. The app may still be buggy or maybe I still don’t have any idea how to use it. But at least I can now play Portal natively on my Mac.
Remember: the cake is a lie.
Steam also distributes game titles from other game developers such as Electronic Arts, Activision, Ubisoft, THQ, Sega, id Software, LucasArts, and Capcom. Other games being sold include Mass Effect, BioShock, Call of Duty, Civilization IV, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and many more. The online store holds specials and promos regularly. This week’s special is the SEGA complete pack which bundles everything from SEGA (excludes future games) for only $89.95.
Related posts:
Pingback: Half-Life 2 released on Steam at 30% regular price « Davao Mac User