Us Mac gamers are a much abused, much maligned lot. We get titles late, and most never at all. By the time most titles do come to the Mac, we’ve probably already broken down and played them using Boot Camp or that gaming PC we hide in the closet that we bought specifically for the purpose. Today, things are looking up.

PC game maker and distributor Valve is dropping all kinds of hints, which are by no means ambiguous, that Steam and many of its titles are headed to the Mac sometime in the near future. MacRumors and various other Mac news sites received teaser images direct from Valve themselves, all of which point to that very same conclusion.

The teaser received by MacRumors features Half-Life protagonist Gordon Freeman wielding a crowbar and wearing an Apple logo on his chest. The image was sent “in anticipation of an upcoming announcement from Valve.” No timeframe or additional details about this announcement were included, however, so we’re left to speculate about that, although next week sees the annual Game Developers Conference taking place in San Francisco, so that’s a good candidate for a potential date.

Other sites also received tantalizing teaser images in a similar vein, which, when you notice the iPhone-like selector control at the bottom of the images, gives a pretty good indication that all are from the same series and further evidence of a Mac connection. MacNN received one using turrets from Team Fortress 2 and Portal acting as Mac and PC from the Justin Long/John Hodgman series of ads:

Shacknews got this image of a Team Fortress 2 Heavy class character as an iPod silhouette:

Eurogamer received this one, featuring a Left 4 Dead character and the “Hate Different” twist on Apple’s longtime slogan:

Rock, Paper, Shotgun got another promo, which plays off of the ad for the first Mac and seems the most clear about Valve’s intentions:

Finally, Macworld received this picture of Half-Life 2′s Alyx Vance character reenacting Apple’s instantly recognizable 1984 commercial:

Additional evidence for the introduction of some kind of Mac version of Steam can be found in the inclusion of Mac elements in the latest beta builds of the game marketplace software. For Mac users who’ve maybe shut out all gaming news out of bitterness or jealousy, Steam is Valve’s digital game distribution software for the PC. It also provides digital rights management (DRM) services for developers, and multiplayer services for users. So far, only Mac Games Arcade provides a similar service for the Mac, but that’s honestly like comparing an aircraft carrier (Steam) to a dinghy (Mac Games Arcade).

Enter ‘Live Disc’, Rogue Amoeba’s cool new innovation that [sort of] eliminates the possibility of delivering discs with out-of-date code. They give you the full story on their blog, but here’s the gist of it:

Live Disc presents a window much like a customized Finder window, with application icons that you can drag for copying or double-click for launching. The magic is, if a newer copy exists on our web server, it will copy or launch that version instead, seamlessly.

This a very cool idea – one I’d love to hear your take on if you pick one up at The Big Show in a couple weeks. The really neat part is that this solution was one that was conceived just to show off their real products! It’s not far-fetched that they could package this into an application of it’s own, and all as a byproduct of their main focus. Great work guys! It’s stuff like this that makes me excited to play on a Mac everyday.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• What Google’s Honeycomb Means for Apple and Microsoft
• A 2011 Green IT Forecast