Valve to give Mac graphics code to Steamworks developers
updated 04:00 pm EDT, Fri July 30, 2010
Should improve speed of game production
Valve will provide some extra resources to Mac developers using the Steamworks community infrastructure, says Jason Holtman, the company's business development director. In exchange for the closer integration with Steam, developers should soon get "a portion" of Valve's graphics code to accelerate production. Specifically the code is meant to help with the Mac OS X graphics layer, considered the biggest obstacle to Mac game development. Windows is typically more concentrated on game support.
The presence of the Steam platform is sometimes argued to be an important step towards boosting Mac gaming. Aside from Valve's own high-profile titles, Steam is also a distribution system for many third-party products. Holtman claims that Steam offerings with Mac editions are so far seeing a sales boost of about 15 to 20 percent.
