Posted by Florian Wardell | 6 comments
Steam on Mac, or lack thereof
Two days ago, Valve released their immensely popular gaming platform, “Steam”, for Mac. Steam had been in beta for a while and the anticipation was great. Steam was set to put an end to whining teenagers claiming that Macs are for “fags” because you can’t shoot people with them. Oh, the joys of blood spattered screens and timeless nights spent saving the world from zombies!
For those of you who never had to cope with a Windows machine, let me briefly explain what Steam actually is. Steam is a digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer, communications platform and content delivery system. It is used to distribute a large number of games and related media entirely over the Internet, from small independent efforts to larger, more popular games. Steam is set apart from similar services primarily by its community features, completely automated game update process, and its use of in-game functionality. The platform allows users to purchase computer games entirely digitally. Instead of receiving a box, disc, or even CD key, purchased software is immediately and permanently attached to the user’s Steam account. Content can be downloaded from Steam servers an unlimited number of times to any number of Internet-connected computers that have the Steam client installed.
There is a drawback though: You can only have one active session per user per computer at the same time. This means that you won’t be able to share your account with someone else.
Steam on Mac
You start by downloading the Steam software here. The steam software is basically a glorified browser with game launching capabilities. So far so good, and a high quality game, Portal, is even free till May 24th. I eagerly hit the “install” button, which prompts Steam to add the game to my library and to download it.
Downloading
Here comes the first nasty surprise: download speeds of less that 100 kb/s. This could have been due to the launch on the Mac platform and the huge amount of data pumped through the lines, but Valve should have anticipated this and used a few extra servers. Two days later, the downloads are barely faster, but I found a workaround. Go to Steam > Preferences > Downloads and change your region. After a few tries, I found that the server called “Cambodia” is, ironically, the fastest, and I can now download using my line’s full speed.
The interface
If you’ve come this far into the settings, you must by now have cursed a few times at the extremely poor interface. Cosmetically, it’s OK. The large all caps fonts remind me of the Windows Phone 7 interface, and the green-grayish tone give it a sleek military look. But the shortcomings really reside in the usability of the software. The scrolling is choppier than on a netbook with memory leaks, and the window management is just plain illogical. For instance, the main window remains active even if a subwindow (settings, for instance) is opened. Clicking “OK” in the preferences will just send the subwindow to the back, which means that you’ll have to navigate to the subwindow again to re-click “OK”. No idea why it’s only working the second time. Also, the minimize / maximize / close buttons on the top left are too far on the right, and they don’t respect the color scheme you’ve selected in the your OSX settings.
Finally, there’s the dock icon, which should win an award for the ugliest, worst designed, least thought-out dock icon ever. My guess? Someone at Valve downloaded a photoshop template for iPhone app icons, copy pasted the Steam logo in there and that’s it. The result? It looks oversized and out of place. But the good news is that you can create your own.
Gameplay
Even if Valve doesn’t produce the games but merely distributes them, it’s reasonable to assume that they at least supervised the production of the ports for Mac OSX. After all, success or failure of Steam depends on how well people will be able to play their games on Mac.
To test the game play, I decided to try two games: one that I had played before on a PC, and one that I had never touched before.
Portal was the first one installed, because it’s free. I had never played this one before and didn’t know what to expect. Turns out the installation and set up went smoothly, and once the game was launched, it was really really hard for me to come back to reality. The game is awesome, unlike anything I’ve tried before. It’s smart and will make you use your brain, which can’t be said of the majority of games out there. I won’t describe what the game is about, but I recommend you try it out. Performance-wise, I have nothing to complain about on my MacBook Pro 2.4 Core2Duo, 4GB Ram, Nvidia 8600M GT and 7200 rpm 500GB hard drive. I got a smooth 60 fps with the settings maxed out, with a few acceptable slow downs.
The second game, I know very well. It’s Sid Meyer’s Civilization IV, an award wining, turn-based strategy game that even got ported to the iPhone. I love this game and spent hours playing it on Windows. I really coulnd’t wait to try this out on my Mac, and I was pleasantly surprised. Performance is good, with a few minor render problems, which I found out were known for year. Way to prepare your software for a big release Valve!
The mess
I can live with a few bugs, and decided to install the various expansion-packs. This is where things started to go downhill. Not only couldn’t I start the expansion packs, but the base install of Civ broke too. Something went wrong during the installation, obviously. While investigating the issue, I discovered that Steam stores its files in user/documents/steam content. Now, if you’re using a Mac, you probably know that the documents folder is off limit and taboo for any application. Only user generated content belongs in this folder. This really needs to be fixed.
Anyway, it seems that an update killed my Civ installation, and from a look into Steam’s forums, every OSX Civ in the world is now unusable. It’s not like Civ is a hugely popular game and like Steam sold millions of copies of that game, right? And it’s not like Civ is one of the only interesting games available on Mac either. I opened a support ticket, and the only answer I got back were was a message with instructions about looking up a folder in C:/etc… I mean, do these people even read before answering?
Conclusion
Steam is a bitter sweet experience. Sweet because the idea is beautiful, and bitter, well, because apparently it’s too good to be true. The few hours I spent using Steam transported me into my dark Windows years. Strange errors, unexpected crashes, the incompetence of a large multinational… Deja-vu. Providing games on Mac is not just converting their code; it’s taking advantage of the unused superiority and potential of OSX. The good news is that most Mac games come with Steam Play, a feature allowing you to use your games on Windows as well. Oh irony, Mac software bad enough to make me use my bootcamp installation!
Maybe all hope isn’t lost. Let’s wait and see. Meanwhile, pirating is just easier.
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