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Valve coming to Mac: Apple ads pwned by parody teasers

Valve has released a series of teaser images that strongly hint it may soon be porting hugely successful games such as Team Fortress and Left 4 Dead to the Mac

Luke Westaway
Luke Westaway is a senior editor at CNET and writer/ presenter of Adventures in Tech, a thrilling gadget show produced in our London office. Luke's focus is on keeping you in the loop with a mix of video, features, expert opinion and analysis.
Luke Westaway
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Many videogame companies have a sense of the theatrical, and some even have a sense of humour. Valve, creator of Half-Life and Portal, possess both -- in generous amounts. Leading up to an anticipated announcement at the Game Developers Conference next week, Valve has released a series of beautiful teaser images to tech sites around the globe, strongly hinting that its revolutionary Steam platform -- which lets gamers buy and download games over a Web connection -- will shortly be coming to Mac.

Now, we could go off on a lengthy diatribe about how bringing hardcore gaming to a Mac audience may very well revolutionise the entire industry, plunging an established and stable PC-gaming community into uncharted waters and changing the gaming landscape forever, but frankly we're too taken with these fantastic Mac-parody teaser shots to care. Click through to see all six, and let us know what you think in the comments.

Update: Valve has now confirmed that its Steam gaming service and Source engine will be coming to Mac users from April. A new feature will also join the service -- Steam Play. This allows customers to purchase a game either on Windows or Mac and play on the other platform free of charge. You'll even be able to start playing on your Mac at home and continue the same game at the same point on your work PC, which sounds goshdarned familiar.

John Cook, director of Steam development, added that all future Valve games will release simultaneously for Windows, Mac and the Xbox 360, with the recently announced Portal 2 being the first. Let's hope the rest of the development community jumps on board, since although Valve may be making its future in-house titles Mac-compatible, it's no guarantee third-party developers will follow.

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Gordon Freeman's looking decidedly trendy in this teaser image sent to MacRumors -- with an Apple logo emblazoned on his Black Mesa-issue HEV suit.
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That's the Heavy from Team Fortress 2, a Russian minigun-toting wrecking machine, seen in this image posted on ShackNews dancing with his beloved 'sandvich', in a manner highly reminiscent of the original iPod ads.
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Rock Paper Shotgun received what looks like a retro magazine clipping, seemingly detailing Valve's ambitions to bring the Steam platform to a Mac audience.
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Yes, that's Francis of Left 4 Dead fame -- the idea of four-player co-op action on a Mac makes our collective heads spin. Eurogamer was the lucky recipient of this little marvel.
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Finally, Macworld was sent this image, in which Half-Life 2's Alyx Vance takes a swing at conformity in this brilliant parody of Apple's 1984 ad. That's all the teasers that have surfaced to date -- stay tuned to CNET UK for any updates.

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