South Korea May Ban Steam

For a country so heavily involved in online gaming, I am surprised to report that South Korea's Department of Video Game Rating Board has expressed the possible action of completely banning Valve's Steam in the country. The claim is that Korea wants every game with Korean language support to have been rated by Korea, including indie and flash games, but this would be quite a feat to accomplish with over 1,000 titles available (even though not all have Korean language support). I can appreciate that a crackdown on unrated games shows that the country is taking responsibility in regulating the industry, but I am suspicious of Korea's intentions; it turns out that the fee charged to rate a game can be thousands of dollars, something smaller developers cannot afford in their budgets. The board is still looking at alternatives to 100% banning Steam, but it is doubtful that Korean gamers will have access to anything near the full library of games and that makes me a sad consumer.

Valve announces Steam for Mac

Parent company Valve has officially announced that starting in May, their popular gaming service Steam will be available for Mac users. In addition, those gamers who own the PC versions of Valve games but want to play on their Macs will be able to re-download games they have purchased onto their Macs for free. Thank you Valve for having a clue about what consumers really want. It's also a smart business move - with computer game sales at roughly $1 trillion, and the Mac market share at about 10% and increasing each year, the installed base has reached a point where it makes sense financially to port titles to the Mac. Valve's move is likely to inspire other developers to follow suit. Apple fanboys must be thrilled with this news, and gamers who have previously hesitated to make the switch from PC to Mac due to gaming limitations may start rethinking their positions and investing in shiny new Apples as more developers jump on board.