Now, finally, you can redeem the code that the company sent you. Then once I enter my account and password, it’s no surprise that, well, I don’t have much there as of yet: Since I have an account (on my PC), I’ll log in by clicking on “Login to an existing account”.

Now double-click to launch the app and once it’s done its initial data download from the Steam server, it’ll ask you to log in to your existing Steam account or create a new one: Once it downloads, it’s a pretty typical Mac app installation process where you just drag the app into the Applications folder and it does whatever magic is needed on first launch: To start, head over to Steam and click on that lovely download link (or just hit the one below): Like an iTunes Store redemption code, however, you can’t really redeem the Steam code without having Steam installed and running on your system, and without you then also signing up for a (free) Steam account. If you’re a computer gamer, it’ll run on your computer, and do a good job. Steam also works with Mac, Windows PC and Linux, so it’s impressively cross-platform. That’s how you can play The Sims 4, for example, as I’ve written about over on my dad blog. It’s an amazing platform that lets you have all your games, all your saved game data, and all your buddies in one place, even across individual games. If you’re even a casual gamer, you know about Steam.