Way back in early June, it was revealed that Valve would be making available it’s first wave of hardware, with the Steam controller taking center stage. As the November 10th release date draws near, it has become clear to Valve that Mac compatibility won’t be something they can get right by November. The result is that Mac users that pre-ordered the hardware, either the controller or the link devices, will not be able to use the one they receive on release.
Instead, there will be a delay, the length of which Valve hasn’t confirmed, between November 10th and whenever Valve fixes compatibility issues. All this information was conveyed to Mac owners that pre-ordered the hardware via an email, wherein Valve stated, “the Steam Controller doesn’t currently support gamepad emulation on Macs…We expect gamepad emulation to become functional within a few weeks.”
The last paragraph of the email mentioned the apology gift each of the effected Mac owners will be receiving as a sort of compensation: “We’ve added the Valve Complete Pack to your Steam account as a gift from Valve.” This bundle, priced at $99.99 on the Steam store, includes all Valve games to date, and guaranteed access to any games to come in the future. As a show of good faith, Valve even said that players that choose to return the hardware can keep the free software from Valve. Not too shabby.
Mac owners interested in making limited use of the hardware as compatibility is optimized have been directed to the Steam Beta client, where updates can be installed as they release.
Mac pre-order’ers will also receive an extension for the return period on their Steam hardware. Normally returns can only be made within 30 days of purchase, but Valve is bumping it up to 60 days for this instance.
Once more, the hardware becomes available on November 10th, 2015 and will work for Mac users within the following few weeks.