Even if you don't care about Steam on Mac, Valve is offering free copies of Portal for all.
News Blips:
Valve releases Steam for Mac, and from now until May 24, gives away free digital copies of Portal (for PC users, too). Developer Valve launched the Mac version of its digital distribution platform today along with over 50 games. They promise to release new titles (well, new for Mac) every week. Perhaps the coolest part is the option to download games for Mac previously purchased for your PC, as I was able to with my copy of Braid. Man, that's way nicer than having to continuously purchase copies of games I already own (cough, Nintendo, cough).
The group Wolfire raised over $1.1 million ($350,000 of which goes to charity) from sales of the Humble Indie Bundle. Last week I posted a video blip for this collection of five games (remember, the one with the bad "rap" song?) available to customers at whatever price they deem fit. Today, over 123,000 people have downloaded the pack and have spent/donated $1,133,289 on it. Contributors may allocate the money to the different developers, the Child's Play and Electronic Frontier Foundation charities, or both. The deal is still going on, so if you're thinking about pitching in, please do...oh, and I hope you offer more than just a penny.
Farmville developer Zynga raises over $110,000 from "Sweet Yam" sales to build a school in Haiti. The developer previously raised $2.8 million through a similar online fundraiser for the nonprofit FATEM for Haiti relief after a devastating earthquake struck the country in January. They are now giving 50 percent of its proceeds from the sale of the crop in Farmville (through May 18) to the group to help build a new school. I don't really care for these various Facebook games, but I have to hand it to Zynga for giving back. [GamePro]
Researchers using PlayStation 3 processing clusters could face issues because of Sony's firmware update. The update eliminates support for alternate operating systems. Various college-university researchers and the United States Air Force rely on groups of PS3s (the latter uses one of 1,700 machines) running Linux to do some heavy computing on a budget. Though in most instances these machines aren't hooked up to the PlayStation Network (or used for games), and therefore don't need the limiting update, if and when they conk out and need replacing or repair, finding machines that can run Linux could prove challenging. Good job, Sony -- you're threatening national security to fight a couple kids too cheap to buy their own games. Are you happy? [Ars Technica]
Got any hot news tips? Send 'em over to tips@bitmob.com.
(0)
