Newell pulls the plug on Mac port

It would appear that the resurgence of the Mac as a games platform was a little short-lived. Gabe Newell, head of Valve Software, has reluctantly cancelled the Mac port of Half-Life, even though it's almost finished.

"At this point we've spent a bunch of money on the Mac product and have spent a lot of time thinking about what we need to do to make sure Macintosh users are happy with it when it ships... which is why we are cancelling the Macintosh version of Half-Life," Newell said in a recent press release.

He went on to say that in order to break even, Valve were going to have to cut corners. This was not something they were prepared to do.

"Given the realities of the Mac gaming market, our Mac customers were always going to be mad at us. They 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. I don't want to be in that business. I would much rather just eat the money we've spent so far than take money from Mac customers and short-change them."

Very honourable, Mr Newell. Now run along and finish Team Fortress 2...