The day that many Mac gamers expected never to see has come at last – Valve has released Half-Life 2, the legendary action game, for the Macintosh. It’s available through Valve’s Steam online download service, which was released for the Mac earlier this month.

Half-Life 2 certainly isn’t new – the game made its debut on the Windows platform in 2004 – but Valve boss Gabe Newell’s historic enmity towards the Mac platform seemed to make the game’s availability on the Mac an impossibility, at least until Valve announced that it was bringing Steam – and Valve’s own library of award-winning games – to the Mac platform earlier this year.

Half-Life 2 is available this week for $6.99, a 30 percent discount off its regular price. Valve has also released Half-Life Episode One and Episode Two for the Mac, and is selling at a discount The Orange Box, a compilation that combines Half-Life 2, Episode One, Episode Two, Portal, and the forthcoming Mac release of Team Fortress 2, a multiplayer online action game.