A lot of viewers around the world have been watching as Valve hinted towards adding Steam support for mac users. Well guess what folks it’s official. 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.”

Support for the Mac in Source and Steamworks is available to third parties immediately. Interested developers should contact Jason Holtman at jasonh@valvesoftware.com.

Scinto submitted this news on the BC2CC tool:

After several weeks in development we are finally ready to unveil the first public beta (Beta 0.8 of the Bad Company 2 CC tool.}After several weeks in development we are finally ready to unveil the first public beta (Beta 0. of the Bad Company 2 CC tool.

This version is only compatible with the R1 version of the game (release version). We will have a patch available by the time R3 (The day 1 patch) version becomes available that fixes the majority of bugs and adds a large amount of new features.

Here’s an overview of what our tool is capable of in its limited R1 state:

BC2CC Admin tool features:

Multiple server support: working

Playerlist: working but not split by team (information isn’t returned in R1)

Serveroptions: only used to set a game password right now

Map list: working, next map is still wonky in R1, occasionally works, other times it doesn’t it also loads a random map in the maplist instead of the nextmap. (+ the list currently doesn’t update when switching gamemodes, that’s our tool, patch for that tomorrow)

Reserved slots: fully working

Banlist: Working, but gets cleared after a restart, haven’t tested with R3 yet. Removing individual bans doesn’t work in R1. Should work in R3. To remove a ban now you’ll need to clear the entire banlist.

Ingame commands: Fully working, you can whitelist players to use specific ingame commands. (@kick, @ban, @unban (doesn’t work at the moment), @restart map, @nextmap (wonky doesn’t always work))
Known bugs:
- unbanning individual players doesn’t work (you need to clear all bans to remove them)
- Maplist doesn’t update properly
- nextmap doesn’t always work
- Playerlist doesn’t show teams
- Ingame commands currently only work when SOMEONE has the tool opened, they aren’t shared between tools (Won’t be supported till we build the serverside daemon)
- Occasional crash bugs
- Ingame vars cannot be set till R3
- Only set password is supported on the serveroptions page
- Punkbuster cannot be set yet (will be supported shortly after the R3 release through an additional tab with all pb options)
- Updater always prompts that there is an update (semi bug, we have a higher version number listed already, will ask the guys to remove this for now)
We hope this tool gives server administrators the tools they need for the first few days of launch till the R3 patch is released. After this we will release a more extended toolset that allows for full server control.

Visit our download section to download beta 0.8.
Be sure to check this out for those getting their servers ready.

UPDATE: Version 1.0 will be out tomorrow following the Day 1 patch. Be sure to check back.

Gamer on the go? Now you can take many of your favorite Xbox 360 experiences with you, wherever you are. Xbox LIVE – the leading online game and entertainment service in your living room – will be available in your pocket for the first time this holiday on Windows Phone 7 Series. Unveiled by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer today at Mobile World Congress 2010, the Windows Phone 7 Series games hub featuring Xbox LIVE unlocks a world of games, fun and a community of more than 23 million active members to Windows Phone 7 Series users around the world.

The games hub will provide many popular Xbox LIVE gaming and community features found on the Xbox 360 today, including the ability to:

· Collect Achievements and build your Gamerscore
· View Xbox LIVE leaderboards
· See your Xbox LIVE Avatar
· Access Spotlight feeds, including the latest tips and tricks, game news, updates and more
· Add Xbox LIVE friends to your friends list while out on the go
· Turn-based (asynchronous) multiplayer gaming

Remember that review i wrote a few months ago about “The Passing” DLC for L4D2? Well, it’s finally here ladies and gents. Valve is showing the first downloadable content pack for Left 4 Dead 2, “The Passing,” at today’s X10 event. The new campaign is now aiming for a March release, the start of new content for the zombie apocalypse shooter.

In “The Passing,” players will meet up with the original Left 4 Dead’s survivors, Francis, Bill, Zoey and Louis, who will appear as non-playable characters. Valve’s Chet Faliszek told Kotaku that Left 4 Dead 2’s survivors will rendezvous with the original quartet later on in the campaign, and that they will aid Coach, Nick, Ellis and Rochelle in finishing the third map in the campaign.

That new add-on will offer an opportunity to see more of the original cast’s character traits, Faliszek said, storylines that will likely be explored in the Left 4 Dead comic book that will arrive after “The Passing.” That comic will be illustrated by Powers artist Michael Avon Oeming.

Then, about a “month or so” after that, Valve plans to release an add-on for the first Left 4 Dead, an episode that will tell the story of the original survivors’ journey to “The Passing.” That unnamed Left 4 Dead add-on will only be playable on the original game, not in the sequel.

Valve says it plans to release “The Passing” on Xbox 360 and PC in “late March” with more details on the Left 4 Dead downloadable content coming soon. This year is going to be pretty exciting for the Xbox 360 let’s hope they can keep this up with games like GOW3 and ect in store.