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In one of the most infamous stories of the era, Half-Life was officially ported to Mac OS back in the year 2000 by Logicware/MacPlay but got shut down by Valve

In one of the most infamous stories of the era, Half-Life was officially ported to Mac OS back in the year 2000 by Logicware/MacPlay but got shut down by Valve at the last minute. I've watched interviews with Rebecca Heineman (one of the devs involved) on the topic. It did not make her happy. Here's an article from the era: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/mac-half-life-canceled/1100-2448672/?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://www.gamespot.com/articles/mac-half-life-canceled/110... Interview with Rebecca Heineman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPTLPXNtb2I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPTLPXNtb2I (skip to timecode 1:36:41 for the Half-Life details)

ColdStream 2mo ago
Oh dear Becky 'Burger' did see both the best and worst of this industry.
rufo 2mo ago
I was so steamed about this as a teenager back when it happened - pretty sure it was one of the foundational reasons I started to consider building my own gaming PC once I got the money together. As an adult, and with the hindsight of seeing how Valve has (generally) supported their games over the years, I can appreciate gaben's reasoning for cancelling it... though as someone gaming on the Mac, we were all kind of used to being second class citizens and bodging together mod support and whatever, so I still think they should've let it come out. > “Given the realities of the Mac gaming market, our Mac customers were… always going to be second-class customers where we couldn’t invest to the same degree in the Mac version as we did elsewhere,” commented Newell. “I don’t want to be in that business. I would much rather we just eat the money we’ve spent so far than take money from Mac customers and shortchange them.”
- AdmiralAsshat 2mo ago
  Of course, if Rebecca is to be believed (per the above interview)...that's not at all why they cancelled it. They cancelled it because Valve was pissed off with Apple for lying to them about the size of their userbase, and then unilaterally decreed henceforth that no Valve game would ever see a release on an Apple platform.
  - rufo 2mo ago
    Ah, interesting - I saved the video but haven’t gotten around to watching it yet. I don’t know if this is touched on, but it certainly does seem like Gabe’s statement could be a nicer-sounding front for what Becky says; if there are fewer users than the math for supporting HL on Macs on an ongoing basis doesn’t make as much sense.
nxobject 2mo ago
Notoriously after Halo for Macintosh was canned, too...
- joshstrange 2mo ago
  It's funny to think that Bungie, a mac developer, created Halo and the original demo was mac-only (as far as I remember) only to get picked up by Microsoft to be the flagship game on the Xbox. I spent many, many hours playing that demo with friends.
intexpress 2mo ago
It sounds like Valve was misled to believe that the Mac sales would be X which would have justified long term Mac support/updates, but in reality the sales were going to be 10% of X...

ColdStream 2mo ago

Oh dear Becky 'Burger' did see both the best and worst of this industry.

rufo 2mo ago

I was so steamed about this as a teenager back when it happened - pretty sure it was one of the foundational reasons I started to consider building my own gaming PC once I got the money together. As an adult, and with the hindsight of seeing how Valve has (generally) supported their games over the years, I can appreciate gaben's reasoning for cancelling it... though as someone gaming on the Mac, we were all kind of used to being second class citizens and bodging together mod support and whatever, so I still think they should've let it come out. > “Given the realities of the Mac gaming market, our Mac customers were… always going to be second-class customers where we couldn’t invest to the same degree in the Mac version as we did elsewhere,” commented Newell. “I don’t want to be in that business. I would much rather we just eat the money we’ve spent so far than take money from Mac customers and shortchange them.”

AdmiralAsshat 2mo ago
Of course, if Rebecca is to be believed (per the above interview)...that's not at all why they cancelled it. They cancelled it because Valve was pissed off with Apple for lying to them about the size of their userbase, and then unilaterally decreed henceforth that no Valve game would ever see a release on an Apple platform.
- rufo 2mo ago
  Ah, interesting - I saved the video but haven’t gotten around to watching it yet. I don’t know if this is touched on, but it certainly does seem like Gabe’s statement could be a nicer-sounding front for what Becky says; if there are fewer users than the math for supporting HL on Macs on an ongoing basis doesn’t make as much sense.

nxobject 2mo ago

Notoriously after Halo for Macintosh was canned, too...

joshstrange 2mo ago
It's funny to think that Bungie, a mac developer, created Halo and the original demo was mac-only (as far as I remember) only to get picked up by Microsoft to be the flagship game on the Xbox. I spent many, many hours playing that demo with friends.

intexpress 2mo ago

It sounds like Valve was misled to believe that the Mac sales would be X which would have justified long term Mac support/updates, but in reality the sales were going to be 10% of X...