Steam for Mac is now officially available, along with a sizeable number of games – including Portal, which is now free for everybody!

Valve’s plan is to release a new set of games for Mac every Wednesday for the next few weeks. This week notably, every game has SteamPlay, which means you buy it once, and it’ll run on all Steam-supportd platforms. This does imply that not every Steam game will be available on Mac and PC. Although games have existed on the Mac for a long time, the promise of true multiplatform computer gaming on the largest scale in a long time is a pretty thrilling idea.

As of right now, there are 63 games/gamepacks listed as beign available for Mac – Torchlight, Civilization, the LucasArts action pack, among others – though Team Fortress 2 is still not in sight. As noted, Portal’s only free until May 24, so get in there! Here is the full list on Steam’s site as of right now:

TriJinx: A Kristine Kross Mystery
World of Goo
Zuma Deluxe
Sid Meier’s Civilization IV
And Yet It Moves
Braid
Escape Rosecliff Island
Civilization IV: Warlords
Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword
Sid Meier’s Civilization: Colonization
Sid Meier’s Civilization: The Complete Edition
BRAINPIPE: A Plunge to Unhumanity
Diaper Dash®
Machinarium
Football Manager 2010
Bob Came in Pieces
KrissX
Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse
Galcon Fusion
Quantz
Torchlight
Toki Tori
Valerie Porter and the Scarlet Scandal
Parking Dash
The Nightshift Code
Nightshift Legacy: The Jaguar’s Eye
Mahjong Roadshow
Hotel Dash Suite Success
DinerTown Detective Agency
Fitness Dash
Gemini Lost
Atlantis Sky Patrol
Fairway Solitaire
Professor Fizzwizzle and the Molten Mystery
Unwell Mel
My Tribe
Tales of Monkey Island Complete Pack
Osmos
Wandering Willows
Wedding Dash 2: Rings Around the World
Zenerchi
Dream Chronicles: The Chosen Child
Diner Dash: Hometown Hero
Cooking Dash
Chocolatier: Decadence by Design
LUXOR: Mah Jong
The Dig
LOOM
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
City of Heroes: Architect Edition
Peggle Nights
Luxor
Luxor 3
Portal
Peggle Deluxe
Bejeweled 2 Deluxe
Bookworm Deluxe
Chuzzle Deluxe

The word is out and it is official, no more teasing, Valve’s digital distribution service, Steam is coming to the Mac OS X and bringing Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, portal, and the Half-Life series (along with Source) with it this April. As a bonus to making Steam Mac compatible, the company also plans to make the Mac a “tier-1″ platform, promising simultaneous releases of games for the Mac OS X, Windows, and Xbox 360. Portal 2 will be the first game that will be released (planned to be released later this year) that will release on Mac and Windows simultaneously. Another feature Valve has mentioned that any games supported by Steam can be played and saved on one, then continued on the other, which is something completely unexpected. Both the PC and the Mac version of any games will come bundled as one price as well so if you’re one of those geeks who has both you won’t have to drop any extra money. Valve’s official announcement can be seen below:

VALVE TO DELIVER STEAM & SOURCE ON MAC

Leading Gaming Service Expands to Mac Platform

March 8, 2010 – Valve announced today it will bring Steam, Valve’s gaming service, and Source, Valve’s gaming engine, to the Mac.

Steam and Valve’s library of games including Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series will be available in April.

“As we transition from entertainment as a product to entertainment as a service, customers and developers need open, high-quality Internet clients,” said Gabe Newell, President of Valve. “The Mac is a great platform for entertainment services.”

“Our Steam partners, who are delivering over a thousand games to 25 million Steam clients, are very excited about adding support for the Mac,” said Jason Holtman, Director of Business Development at Valve. “Steamworks for the Mac supports all of the Steamworks APIs, and we have added a new feature, called Steam Play, which allows customers who purchase the product for the Mac or Windows to play on the other platform free of charge. For example, Steam Play, in combination with the Steam Cloud, allows a gamer playing on their work PC to go home and pick up playing the same game at the same point on their home Mac. We expect most developers and publishers to take advantage of Steam Play.”

“We looked at a variety of methods to get our games onto the Mac and in the end decided to go with native versions rather than emulation,” said John Cook, Director of Steam Development. “The inclusion of WebKit into Steam, and of OpenGL into Source gives us a lot of flexibility in how we move these technologies forward. We are treating the Mac as a tier-1 platform so all of our future games will release simultaneously on Windows, Mac, and the Xbox 360. Updates for the Mac will be available simultaneously with the Windows updates. Furthermore, Mac and Windows players will be part of the same multiplayer universe, sharing servers, lobbies, and so forth. We fully support a heterogeneous mix of servers and clients. The first Mac Steam client will be the new generation currently in beta testing on Windows.”

Portal 2 will be Valve’s first simultaneous release for Mac and Windows. “Checking in code produces a PC build and Mac build at the same time, automatically, so the two platforms are perfectly in lock-step,” said Josh Weier, Portal 2 Project Lead. “We’re always playing a native version on the Mac right alongside the PC. This makes it very easy for us and for anyone using Source to do game development for the Mac.

These announcements are probably words Mac gamers have only dreamt about until now. This also allows other developers to easily create Mac-compatble versions of games without much additional effort, which should open up many doors for future gaming under Steam.

With Portal being updated with a new ending this past week, several gaming fans noticed Max OS X components and other items in the update indicating that Valve is planning on making a move into the Mac platform. Several images were released to various companies such as Macrumors, MacNN, Shacknews, Eurogamer, Rock, Paper, Shotgun, and Macworld indicating the same. The pictures are Valve Software’s game characters with something Mac releated. The teasers generated alot of controversy and conversation amongst the gaming community as well as to those who infamously debate about the ongoing Mac vs. PC argument.

The teasers can be seen below:

Personally, the Steam coming to Mac is a good thing. It should provide Valve with more profit as well as Mac users one less thing to complain about. Games will also be more populated because believe it or not, I am pretty sure not everyone installs Windows on their Mac just to play games such as Team Fortress 2 or Half-Life. Overall, a good move from Valve from my pointo f view.What do you think of Steam coming to the Mac? Share your thoughts and comments below.