Good news, gamers! Steam Mobile is available on your iPhone and iPod touch right now. While of course it will work on your iPad, it sadly isn’t optimized.
With this free app you can see which of your Steam friends are online, chat with your buddies, and shop for Mac and Windows games. If you’re a heavy Steam user, this will make your social interactions a lot easier. Just because you’re on the train doesn’t mean you can’t be messaging your bro-hams (that’s the lingo the kids these days are using, right?).
This is great, but don’t start thinking you’re going to see Steam selling games on the iPhone. We saw Apple drop the axe on an in-app gaming platform before, so this isn’t a likely first step for Steam to enter the mobile space. At least on iOS, that is.
It does bring up an interesting question, though. Maybe Valve, maker of hits like Half-Life and Portal as well as the owners of Steam, is interested in making games for mobile platforms. It’s certainly possible. We’ve seen that great first-person shooters can be made for iOS thanks to Rage HD. This probably isn’t Steam’s beginning for the mobile space, but it could signal Valve’s.
Hat tip to Joystiq