Why Valve gave up on Mac gaming

[@awolsam]

I believe that Apple not adopting Vulkan was the main reason Mac support got dropped from Proton. With that move Apple complicated supporting their platform, and also sabotaged the momentum of the only competitor to DirectX. Apple also changing CPU architecture and abandoning old certainly did not help either.

[@notjustforhackers4252]

Yes. This assumption is correct. Vulkan and metal were mentioned as a sticking point when value abandoned development on the MAC version. Gaming on Linux did a write up on it.

[@matthias6933]

Apple also dropped OpenGL out of sudden just to force developers into supporting Metal. We all know how well that turned out.

[@hishnash]

The reason apple never adopted VK is they knew they were moving down thier own TBDR gpus and while VK supports this PC titles do not at all make use of this part of the VK API (that is not even supported on PC GPUs... most of VK isoptuional remember).

[@hishnash]

@@matthias6933 All of a sudden is a little bit over the top I believe apple gave 8 years notice.

[@matthias6933]

​@@hishnash the "notice" was Apple not delivering updates of OpenGL after 4.1. There were barely any games on OpenGL that required a higher version.

[@Zoolookuk]

I was with you until you said "it would be relatively trivial to update these ports to 64-bit" which isn't true. At the WWDC workshops they would always just show you the magic "compile for 64-bit" button, same as they do for "compile for ARM" but games are usually built from dozens of smaller libraries and have many interdependencies and it is those that haven't been updated, so it's impossible to update the game. That's the reason why when you install 20 year old games on Windows, it will install some 2005 C++ redistributable library, or .NET 1.3 or whatever. On Mac, all of that older stuff is long dead, not maintained and not supported anyway. It's not just Valve who haven't bothered updating their 32-bit games, I have at least a dozen games from the Mac App Store that won't run in 64-bit, like the original Rome Total War, Call of Duty 2 and 4, Flatout 2 and a bunch of others. I'll never do it again, because to your point, Apple might just abandon something critical in future and games purchased today might not work tomorrow. You video seems to leave the blame on Valve making selfish decisions for their own benefit, when it has really been Apple that has always been anti-gaming and frankly anti-consumer when it comes to backwards compatibility. Windows for all its faults has kept compatibility back to XP in Games for 90 - 95% of all games without any special hacks. The rest can usually be hacked to work with some ini file changes or something else. I mostly game on Deck now, but I simply don't trust Apple to keep games working for 2, 3 decades.

[@Andytizer]

Specifically the Source games are very easy to port - it's already been done. The source code of the Source engine from 2020 was leaked and there are now native ARM 64-bit macOS ports of Portal, Half-Life 2 etc. which you can build yourself.

[@Zoolookuk]

@@Andytizer OK fair. Do you have a video on that and how to do it - sounds interesting. I've seen the versions for Quake and others that require to have the original Windows game (ironically) rather than the original Mac game. So you'd still have to buy it again :)

[@hishnash]

So apple never dropped 32bit support what they dropped was 32bit system libs. You could continue to use a 32bit lib as long as you always switched runtime mode to 64bit before calling system apis. This is how wine/crosover are able to run 32bit games.

[@hishnash]

@@untemperance So apple do use the method of detecting what version an app was compiled with and thus providing old Beauvoir based on this. But that does not apply to stuff like dropping 32bit support. Apple gave upto 10 years notice that 32bit support was dead. For 5 years of that they made it extremely clear. Keeping it would have bloated the os and massively expanded the kernel attack surface

[@amrrahmy123]

​@@Andytizer @Zoolookuk The developer can do it if you give him an incentive.

[@Pikminiman]

Bear in mind Valve is a small company. Although they have deep pockets, their entire headcount is still just a few hundred people. The fact they were able to make and ship Steam Deck at all is incredible. But by the same token, it's not possible for Valve to allocate enough person-hours to fix and rebuild Source 1 games for Apple silicon. Valve employees have a lot of freedom to leave uninteresting projects, so the company only puts concentrated effort toward solving interesting problems.

[@tropicten]

I think you’re underestimating Valve. They could easily hire contractors to update their Mac ports. Just like they hired contractors to update TF2. It’s not a matter of headcount, money, or lack of resources. They deliberately chose not to fix their Mac games for the reasons stated in the video.

[@nisbahmumtaz909]

@@tropicten The last time they relied on even seemingly reliable 3rd parties, they got shafted by TERRIBLE developers that don't align with their core ideas. Richard Garfield singlehandedly killed Artifact, which domino'd their Dota IP title's reputation down the drain. I don't blame them at all for being squeamish about ever considering an external party for larger projects again.

[@shoukokomi8081]

>Bear in mind Valve is a small company. Are you sure about that?

[@RockyPrabowo]

​​@@shoukokomi8081 "headcount wise" is accurate.

[@hahasamian8010]

​@@shoukokomi8081 Were you reading the point or not?

[@ChimpRiot]

Apple themselves are to blame. They did the same with all the PowerPC games by removing Rosetta 1 completely. It should have remained an optional inclusion in macOS. Who knows when they will remove Rosetta 2 64-bit support..

[@tonyburzio4107]

Apple is about to buy Activision/Blizzard. Things are changing.

[@EverRusting]

This... has absolutely nothing to do with the topic... Proton support wasn't removed because lack of x86 emulation...

[@ChimpRiot]

@@tonyburzio4107 I doubt it, but that would be pretty funny, unexpected and timely 😂

[@ChimpRiot]

@@EverRusting It absolutely is relevant. I would not want to develop for a platform that has a track record of forcing incompatibility into updates, nor purchase those games as a customer either. Windows and Linux are a safer bet.

[@wolfVFXmc]

I’m pretty sure apple removed Rosetta 1 because of licensing issues

[@BrianJones-wk8cx]

While I have enjoyed my Macs for decades now, I think it’s a little disingenuous to put anything on Valve for “dropping support” for MacOS when Apple has arguably been the biggest culprit in its own lack of presence in the gaming world. The shift to Metal (instead of properly supporting Vulkan) seems perhaps equally limiting if not more so than depreciating 32-bit app support. Developers of all stripes (think emulators for lowest hanging fruit) decry MacOS for not having baked in Vulkan support. Even with community work around MoltenVK, Apple lags behind not because of Valve but because of its own choices. Even your esteemed Codeweavers has spoken out against the Metal limitation, citing it as a primary reason even they cannot provide more robust gaming support. Valve doesn’t need anyone to defend it, don’t get me wrong, but neither does Apple. They have not prioritized AAA gaming in the modern era, nor are they willing to play by open standards that would make the platform even more attractive. If Valve “gave up,” it was only because Apple gave up first.

[@permarc0]

they made their own choices simple... what I have to prioriatize? dsp to make thing faster, not general computing! and drop support to everything standardized, remember red and blue ocean economy! apple is now inthe position to try to rule them all, but things will come!

[@simonk5885]

Yeah, I think it's a difference of ideals. If you look at apple's history QuickDraw 3d was their base 3d and 2D graphics library on the powerPC based Mac. Then Apple invested in OpenGL because technology was changing so fast and pushed quickDraw to side for openGL. Which was opensource. Then it got to a point where the open source 3d work started focusing more on windows instead of being open source. Thus when it came time to move OpenGL updates over to the Mac it became harder and produced code that was less performant and caused Apple to spend extra time on the OpenGL port. The same would have happen with a Vulcan port Apple plotted course to bring their native 3d graphics apis back to their devices which ended up being metal. Which gave them greater control of their own hardware. And development timelines. Also Metal existed and was released before Vulkan. Don't thing anyone gave up. All this is a misalignment of priories for Apple and Valve. They took their companies in different directions.

[@BrianJones-wk8cx]

Thank you, @@simonk5885, I think you offer some great perspective here. I like your vantage point on this and think it’s the best articulation I’ve heard thus far. I would only add that Apple’s sin was arrogance in a way, as I remember Vulkan being on the horizon and Open GL definitely being problematic in OS X. Apple thought it could solve the problems with Metal. And regardless of the actual efficacy of their solution, it was never adopted enough to make that substantial difference. If Apple had been Microsoft-a la Direct X-we’d have a different view. We’d laud them as brilliant. But Apple never built that kind of market share or momentum, so the move looks foolish for them in hindsight (at least from a hardcore gamer’s perspective). But you’re absolutely right-Apple has focused fairly narrowly on serving its own needs and getting its own access to bare metal apis for itself, and for many workflows the proof is in the pudding and the way they tailor hardware to software and vice versa. It doesn’t work for everybody-and arguably is a liability for gaming-but for those it does work for, it’s hard to beat! Thank you for offering up your perspective on this. I really appreciate the thoughtful insights!

[@gotoastal]

Well said. You sound like a future Linux or BSD user if you aren’t already!

[@DiThi]

@@simonk5885 Both Metal and Vulkan are made from the same base, Mantle. They're even more similar from one another than OpenGL was similar to D3D. Vulkan is so low level (and its conformance suit so thorough) that is much easier to implement than OpenGL used to be. Nowadays OpenGL's suite is as thorough but is way more complex due to the staggering amount of legacy behaviours it has to emulate...

[@MyurrDurr]

Valve have been the only large game company showing any support at all to Linux, which is great but very disappointing since no one else seems to want to and lots of large devs seem totally against it at all :/

[@macgamer1973]

im happy Valve , GOG, Epic still support Mac gaming. we still have games releasing for Macs in 2023

[@valletas]

Many devs are openly hostile to it making their games not work on linux at all and even ban players for using it Reminds me of time sweney saying on twitter that porting unreal online games to linux was "as simple as pressing a button" Fortnite never came to linux nor did any of their in house games

[@MyurrDurr]

@@valletas Minecraft Bedrock is also never going to come to Linux even though t works just fine except for the Xbox related things like the Store and friends system

[@valletas]

@@MyurrDurr some fans have ported the android version to linux using a custom launcher and honestly it works perfectly well its a shame that it will never come officially because it could solve some of the crashing problems Well at least java works on linux as long as it exists thanks to how open java is

[@MyurrDurr]

@@valletas Yeah, but I can never get the launcher to work properly :/ its too glitchy the one time it worked for me, I was able to launch the game and the game itself worked fine other than the Friend system and store

[@RageAgainstMyMachine]

I feel like Andrew Tsai is the only hope for apple gaming. Love the content man!

[@AdmiralBison]

Apple is not interested in gaming. They are interested in their monopoly App store with F2P mobile non-games and their Apple non-arcade service. It's been decades and if Apple hasn't put real effort into gaming since then, they never will. For years I tried to make Macs an actual alternative gaming platform but I eventually got the point and stuck with Windows, Android and eventually will migrate to Linux. As a former fan of all Apple products having nearly had all of them, I no longer have any Apple devices and the only thing I would be interested in from Apple is a full MacOS driven ipad, but stll I wouldn't use that for gaming at all. IF manufacturers like Samsung offered Linux versions of their tablets and phones, I am confident they will eventually kill the iPad and damage the iPhone. Some hardware makers are starting to offer Linux versions, but I recon it will not only take big software companies like Valve but also big hardware companies like Samsung to offer Linux versions to really disrupt Windows and MacOS.

[@muhammadyusoffjamaluddin]

Except running Raid Shadow Legend on Apple Machine. THANKS!

[@RageAgainstMyMachine]

@@muhammadyusoffjamaluddin after playing cod, tomb raider, and resident evil...it's a shame to see the m1 laptops not be utilized as a gaming laptop. The games run so smooth. I dont know why apple doesn't see that they will destroy windows gaming laptop market with 20% more effort in their gaming department

[@Vimildar]

Spending money on native MacOS games is the way of the future

[@PanosPitsi]

@@AdmiralBison how is it a monopoly if the AppStore only has 15 percent of the market share? Android fanboys are tik tok drones at this point.

[@Evteboda]

i gave up on mac gaming and just get myself a Steam deck. it is perfect portable gameheld pc

[@whigmalwhim4760]

LunarG, the company behind MoltenVK (the compatability layer for Vulkan to run on Metal), is funded by Valve. This goes to show that Valve is still interested in bringing games to MacOS and has R&D to back them up.

[@SamAmiri]

7:13 - yeah, with steam deck selling close to 3.5m already, they definitely created a platform that currently offers over 5m active players. It’s crazy to think they pulled it off. Probably in a few years time, they will hit 30m+ users on Linux/proton.

[@Andytizer]

Yes the Steam Deck is now a huge platform in itself and Mac is just an afterthought now.

[@SamAmiri]

@@Andytizer and it’s only going to get better. We are definitely getting Steam Deck 2 in a year or two before Valve delaying Steam Deck 3 indefinitely 😂. I might be jumping the gun but by the time Steam Deck 2 comes out, it won’t be too far fetched to expect a 1080p 120hz panel running AAA games at ultra. What do you think?

[@irfanhazza]

​@@SamAmiri a "huge" resolution jump is unlikely, but a refresh rate jump over 60Hz is way less likely. companies like Valve, from what we've seen with the Steam Deck, strives (not necessarily achieves) to offer a good out of the box experience for everyone, without any tweaks. even if Steam Deck 2 has the performance to achieve consistent 1080p 120Hz gaming (never gonna happen), existing battery technology will definitely put Valve away from implementing that - as it would definitely put off a huge chunk of potential customers who wouldn't know why their game could only last for 30 mins. that is also best case scenario of actually playing a game at 1080p 120Hz on a 1080p 120Hz screen. due to performance limitations, it'd be more likely that it'd be playing a game at 60Hz consistently in 800p with the battery consumption of running it on a wasted 1080p 120Hz screen.

[@SamAmiri]

@@irfanhazza I disagree, the current important in technology has made 1080, 120hz at high setting possible in a small form factor. There won’t be a Steam Deck 2 for another 2-3 years. It’s almost guaranteed at this point. I think valance will different the price points using different screens and offer OLED.

[@irfanhazza]

@@SamAmiri i can almost guarantee a consistent 1080p 120Hz performance in a small form factor won't even account for half of top 100 games on Steam, even 3 yrs from now. But best case scenario, even if it does become possible, Valve still very likely wouldn't go thru with a 1080p 120Hz screen for a product that they strive to be good out of the box for the masses if we're still stuck w our decades-old lithium battery tech we've been using. Some already criticise the Deck for its battery life, when in reality, it's currently the best among other handheld PCs. This dream handheld of yours will definitely come in the next 3 years (this year even: Ally), but not from Valve. Again, this is only my opinion n some others eg. ThePhawx which has a pretty insightful video on it.

[@untemi0]

I used to love having 32bit games running on my Mac it's so disappointing that Apple decided to drop it. I'm still confused about their reasoning behind it, and it's frustrating when advancements lead to things we loved being taken away.

[@UmbraWeiss]

The main problem is Apple not wanting to support anything 3rd party, they want all the control on their devices, people who buys Apple products nowadays just love to be prisoners.

[@gotoastal]

You should considering moving to a different OS with your next purchase

[@macgamer1973]

I keep one Mac Pro 2010 on Mac OS Mojave for 32and 64bit games

[@Simboiss]

You need a cut-off point at some point, and Apple is simply more agressive on that part. Users and devs had 12 years to adapt to 64-bits. How many more years is acceptable?

[@Simi69]

It makes absolutely no business sense for Valve to help Apple get games running on Mac OS. Suppose Valve kept working on Proton and got it working on the latest Macs, some of which are as powerful as a PS5. Apple would simply steal that tech and add dozens of AAA games to their own store and cut out Valve like Microsoft tried to do with Games for Windows Live

[@RabbitConfirmed]

Valve really did everything they could! Shame on Apple for letting it slip like that!

[@Echelon730]

Steam OS 3.0 is a VIRUS!!! After getting the Steam Deck, some how I got Linux on my desktop, and now everything is Open Source this and Open Source that. MAN MY WALLET IT GETTING FAT WITH ALL THE MONEY I AM NOT SPENDING!!! :P

[@hajjmaxime1932]

hmmm, you should give all that money to the jacket guy (Nvidia)

[@Echelon730]

@Hajj Maxime mmm can't... closed sourced drivers. Got to go team red :p

[@arround1]

Unless you have to buy a steam deck and games only in steam, which is not so cheap.

[@Echelon730]

@Hans Huckebein $400 for a laptop that can game is not bad. Plus Office 365 + win11 home edition = $190-$200 already. Is there problems with the steamdeck yes, but nothing game breaking and it honestly is the best deal in gaming, and yes I am including Gamepass in that statement.

[@Andytizer]

Install Raid for Free ✅ IOS/ANDROID/PC: clcr.me/AndrewTsai_Apr23 and get a special starter pack with an Epic champion ⚡ Tallia⚡ Click here📱 egghunt.plarium.com/ to participate in the AR EggHunt Event. Get your chance to grab Legendary RAID Champion or Amazon Gift Cards with a total value of $20K for FREЕ💰🎁

[@goruyorsunuzz]

answer is steamdeck

[@Andytizer]

@@goruyorsunuzz The answer is.. RAID SHADOW LEGENDS 😅

[@Enum_Dev]

No thanks

[@goruyorsunuzz]

but current/presentday reason is steamdeck

[@rafaelgadret]

Apple did the same thing on iOS. To artificially create demand for new apps, Apple stopped supporting 32-bit apps on iOS, showing a lack of respect for customers who invested large sums of money in 32-bit apps, forcing those customers to buy new 64-bit apps when they had Paid and working 32-bit apps that solved your problems.

[@outfl1595]

"a little bit of development at work" *cries in dev estimation trauma*

[@Lestibournes]

At the time of the Steam Machines about 25% of the games on Steam had Linux support, but those were mainly indies. Steam Machines were basically consoles that were priced like a gaming PC, but with only a subset of the library available on PC and no real selling point

[@AsciiWolf]

Nice video except the information that there "were virtually no Linux game ports" in 2014. That is clearly untrue. There were already multiple ports of AAA games from Feral/Aspyr in 2014 + many older native Linux games (mostly from the indie scene) that were ported to Linux years before Linux Steam became a thing. Anyway, I agree that the amount of Linux games available was fairly limited in 2014.

[@josetomascamposrobledano4618]

Capcom is my GOD. Making Re8 for Mac gives me hope for the future. Sure I won’t have a 10000 game library. But hopefully I get some QUALITY instead of the time wasters of the Apple Arcade.

[@sigmattew]

ye if i was Valve, i wouldn't do it either...also the green washing, making their decvices basically unrepairable for end users and trying to squeeze more money with half baked products (yes, im talking about the infamous M2 line up) doesn't help either

[@macgamer1973]

reason im saying on intel Mac , tired of Apple mind games

[@MacinMindSoftware]

A sober informative update on the state of Mac gaming.The lowend Macs went from integrated Intel graphics to very respectable with Apple Silicon and the upper end like M1 Max 32c GPU is comparable hardware to a PS 5. The base of Mac users with good gaming hardware must be much better now than it's been in over a decade, maybe more. Everything I happen to like to play requires at least 1 layer of translation (Rosetta 2) and many require up to 4 layers of translation like with Crossover (Win-Mac, X86-ARM, DirectX-Vulcan, Vulcan-Metal). With a bit of determination, it's amazing what can be pulled-off by users now. But it shouldn't be just the domain of this kind of user. The hardware is ready. The market is big enough. I think it's mostly in Apple's hands to lead this, build some bridges, remove unneeded rigidity and create some goodwill with game developers. Games that still have to run in some translation are still nicer than not having those games. Remember the Cider era when Apple first went to Intel brought a good number of ports to the Mac. I appreciated it.

[@permarc0]

they want just money, nothing else...

[@gs7828]

Had they wanted to fix that, they would have solved it years ago. They have immense resources at Apple.

[@macgamer1973]

I say it worst with M1, you have no control over your hardware like intel Mac. an that Apple doing to use integrated intel GPU. Just like my old 17" MACBOOKPRO 2.2 i7. Even after apple found out GPU was faulty , they lied to judge and replace with same faulty GPU. Apple could've went back AMD to ask for different model GPU

[@7sn133]

We missed you 7 days without uploading video 💔

[@El.Duder-ino]

The current state of gaming on Macs is Apple’s fault!!! Apple is the only one to be blamed!

[@quandalemuncher2337]

I think another important factor is Apples stubborness when it comes to vulkan. They refuse to use vulkan for whatever reason and instead shove metal down Apple users throats. There is something called moltenvk but its just not there. The implication of this is that DXVK cant really work when Mac os doesnt even use vulkan. Its honestly so stupid I dont know why Apple just doesnt throw metal to the bin and use vulkan and support vulkan financially and help its development. Its super anti consumer. Apparently crossover does support dxvk but again thats not valve, its a lot of work to workaround apples stubborness...

[@chidorirasenganz]

Vulkan is a 3rd party open source library. Apple would like to rely on itself rather than be restrained by others see the Apple Silicon transition or how they design their own displays vs using off the shelf parts

[@casperes0912]

Metal came out before Vulkan. Metal was one of the first modern graphics APIs. Only AMD's Mantle came before it. I would like official Vulkan support alongside Metal, but Apple focusing on the technology they made that was part of establishing the modern graphics API paradigm also seen in Vulkan and DX12; Well that just makes sense. And for Apple to support Vulkan is also not a trivial added cost to them, while supporting another graphics API is not *that* much extra development effort for games studios. Not *that* much of game code is the actual shading language code

[@reidond]

moltenvk is not there yet because metal itself is lacking in features that present in vulkan, this is what happens when only one company develops stuff under closed doors

[@AyaWetts]

Crossover uses DXVK by using MoltenVK... DXVK also ends with DX11 support, and works okay with Metal. The issues are around VKD3D (which supports DX12) and Metal limitations that make using it and MoltenVK very problematic.

[@hishnash]

The reason they do not support VK is that VK support on apples GPUs would not be of any use to anyone. VK is not openGL and it is not write once run-anywere. The entier point is that you have low level access to the hardware and you do not expose info toe the driver for it to optimise what you are doing so instead you need to do that. PC titles are thus optimised for NV, AMD and intel GPUs these GPUs are very differnt to apples and a VK engine will not `just run` on apples GPUs through plain old VK without a load of SHIMs.

[@juniorwmg]

I can see how Apple is digging its own grave here. They now have Arcade, but they never really advertise their "machines" as gaming PCs. They remove 32x, but they want users to play games. They want stuff to "just work" but they never really do anything for that to happen.

[@vladimir_k_bestplayerna1217]

MacOS intentionally doesn't support Vulkan? Dude, one of its selling points is how it works on so many different platforms. Apple really feels like the Nintendo of PC hardware.

[@reutin]

Have you heard anything about Apple creating it's own AAA game studio inside company and quietly signing with top gaming studios to make a ports of biggest games to Apple ecosystem? Mark Gurman says that Apple is investing heavily in gaming as one of the prime features of upcoming headset in July and that will affect all OS form iOS to macOS.

[@Andytizer]

Haven't heard anything like that, would be big news if true!

[@Slurkz]

Sounds like hopium… But that would be amazing…

[@permarc0]

copy paste does not pay in the gaming world...

[@anlumo1]

I used to be a Mac developer for 20 years. I can't count the number of times Apple declared to invest big into gaming during that time, and it never went anywhere. The company knows that gaming is important, but its mindset just isn't compatible with it.

[@BrotherCheng]

I think a corollary to the 32-bit issue is that I think it's a very likely possibility that Apple will kill Rosetta 2 (x86 emulation) in the not-distant future. From their point of view, developers should just fall in line and port their apps over, but their view frequently ignore the fact that old games are not live software and rely on backwards compatibility to work. If they kill Rosetta it will make a large amount of games not playable just like killing 32-bit did.

[@tablettablete186]

I feel more like Apple gave up on gaming on MacOS...

[@matheusgabry2113]

Because the entire purpose of Valve investing on Proton was so they could have their own platform away from Windows, if/when Microsoft decides to lock the entire system (which they have been experimenting with Windows 10 S). Why invest time and money on another walled garden? Apple don't want their users buying games on Steam, they want users to subscribe to Apple Arcade so they can have full control and have the infinite revenue stream.

[@macgamer1973]

Im getting tired of apple for everything I use of their service. Im looking to get a Drobo or other in house storage. I'm tired of Apple iCloud, Arcade, News, and all other 3rd party service take fees.

[@TianXu]

This year I finally drop any last hope for any decent macOS gaming. I've been thru bootcamp, eGPU w/ unofficial driver, 32-bit support discontinue, openGL support discontinuation, the apple sillicon transition and it took me this long to realize apple has never really take gamers serious other than occasionally throw breadcrumbs. After the fact that Diablo IV, Mount and Blade 2, Dying light 2, CS 2 all moving away from macOS, it's my cue to switch to a PC and android.

[@hco888]

There's no need to choose only one. If you can afford it, own both. Use the best tool for the job.

[@thejackimonster9689]

Completely forgot they killed off 32bit applications as well. But then they also moved to a custom ARM architecture and killed off OpenGL support while Vulkan is only available via MoltenVK which was open-sourced because Valve invested in its development. But then MoltenVK is still far behind the current standard of Vulkan. I know that most indie developers have completely canceled the idea to support macOS because Apple breaks those common and cross-compatible APIs on their platform. It's already less work to natively support Linux than macOS. Seeing in this video how Valve has nearly given up macOS entirely, the only remaining party supporting it seems to be modern game engines. Those still support macOS and allow native ports. However from Linux I certainly know that a game engine supporting a platform is not enough. Because many assets, scripts or third party libraries might not support it, making native ports impossible or a big hassle which isn't worth it. I think in the future it might be far more likely for Apple users to get a second device running SteamOS than trying to make a game run on macOS.

[@gruntaxeman3740]

Only sane way to make game is using game engine that takes care of low level graphics library. And making game engine only sane way is to use graphics library that takes care of lowlevel. This has been true for decades while there is different low level graphic libraries in consoles and home computers plus all wierd things in drivers so graphics code may be a bit different on different graphics card. But this is true that Apple was way too fast removing support from OpenGL. Game engines and graphicengines are not ready yet implementing Metal support. Most of third party libraries and scripting environments are made in Linux environment so that is actually easy for game developers. Issues are coming assets that are compiled to native code in other environment. Also, binary level compatiblity is based on operating system, not by having Linux so there are different libraries on different operating systems. Also commitment of keeping binary level compatibility working is based by operating system. Linux based systems shines on source level compatibility. In Linux environments, basicly all C++ code got broken in binarylevel somewhere 2005..2008 when they switch newer compiler. Things started to broke again in 2015 and now there is flatpak and similar that solves by bundling all libraries to app. Valve also started to work some sideloading thingy "Steam runtime" and based on what I investigated, there are different versions of libraries from 2013 so that is also one way to have backward compatibility in binary level.

[@LegioXXI]

As a mac user i can confirm. I installed Linux on my old Windows 7 PC and most games run with proton no problem. I actually like having a dedicated gaming system, makes managing files and games easier if they don’t interfere with your „regular“ files and programs.

[@jfftck]

Apple is so great to the users, having to run Linux to use the Proton compatibility layer just to play Windows games. If Apple would just support the open standards for graphics APIs, you wouldn’t need to do any of that as it would be much easier to create patches that allows Proton to just work. Valve is doing the right thing by not supporting Metal, you even give multiple examples of Apple dropping support for older technology and who is to say they wouldn’t do the same with Metal. Just looking at the whole history of Apple, you will see the pattern of great third party software being killed by Apple removing the technologies that they built on top of and then Apple releases an improved replacement technology that makes the third party software unnecessary.

[@adambester3673]

I game on Linux (x86 not arm) and i almost never worry if a single player game is going to be proton compatible anymore. if the game doesn't work out of the box its a bit of a surprise, and if it doesn't work after an easy tweak or two I'm shocked.

[@leonidas14775]

Between changing API levels, different CPU architectures, and throwing obstacles in the user's way in the name of security, Macs have had terrible backwards compatibility compared to windows. Rosetta is a step in the right direction though.

[@Sumire973]

Rosetta is just a transition tool, once the transition to ARM on Macs is done, it's only a matter of time before Apple discontinues it.

[@tablettablete186]

​@@Sumire973 I remember hearing that they would remove Rosetta 2 in the future... WHY!? 😢

[@gruntaxeman3740]

@@tablettablete186 It is Apple's policy having backward compatibility limited time. There was 32-bit PowerPC era Mac OS 10.0-10.6, 32-bit Intel era Mac OS 10.4-10.14, Intel 64-bit era 10.5->, and ARM 64-bit era from macOS 11 -> So they will drop 64-bit Intel support like they remove all 32-bit support. There is no difference between companies that no one supports forever old platforms. It is game developer responsibility to do maintenance and upgrade game to be compatible latest API and hardware versions.

[@LunaRosalie]

mac killing backwards support like that was insane LMAO closed platform problems

[@LordCritish]

"If you buy a Mac for gaming you're doing it wrong!" has always been the credo and will always be that. Apart from running some casual puzzle games, a few AAA games like Tomb Raider in "inferior mode" or running DOSBox to play retro games, there isn't much to gaming on Mac. You buy a Mac as a work machine, not for gaming. And Apple aren't gamers by passion, unlike Steam employees.

[@macgamer1973]

at first Apple and Commodore 64 was about gaming. they since move from that arena , if apple all about work, you don't need Apple Music ,Apple News, Apple TV, Podcasting these all entertainment like video games

[@AndersHass]

I do doubt those old games by Valve will also be Deck Verified but they are playable unlike on MacOS. They have been open to fan remakes of their old games which could then bring more of a focus to make it work on Steam Deck and perhaps also MacOS.

[@ArdaSReal]

This video was sich a nice and informative watch, please more!

[@ofoosy]

I'm really suprised to learn codeweavers helps proton dev, but not suprised. I paid for codeweavers wine frontend subscription in 2009 while I was still learning linux and helped immensely to keep me on the platform before I knew what they were doing. Only thing I was annoyed by was seeing lights through walls in CS:S!

[@thepld]

it's focus is on a completely different direction...that will be abandoned in just two years time at this rate

[@JelloPuddingMaster]

I think the main reason that Valve isn't supporting mac as much as it used to is because apple is simply obtuse and arbitrary, not to say Microsoft isn't just to a lesser extent.The fact that apple as such tight control over their software, hardware, and the workflow of entire industries means they can do stuff like completely retiring support for 32bit applications without so much as a dime lost in revenue. Where Microsoft is fairly liberal with what you can do with windows, provided they don't pull some shady shit like with the browser wars and undocumented APIs, apple can just say "no, metal or you don't get access to GPU" and anyone who writes software that would benefit from access either has to bend the knee or drop out (to the detriment of the end user, programmer, and company/dev team). I think, ultimatly, that apple is going to fall on their own sword and probably would have too if it didn't have a nigh literal cult surrounding it.

[@baileyestler1390]

I have a Mac for school and would probably buy more games if I could pick them up on my laptop away from my pc. I love to csgo surf in class lol.

[@vladislavkaras491]

Thanks for the video!

[@alexandrubossro]

Seems like Apple doesn't want to be a part of gaming industry. At least we still have something to put down the Windows monopoly and being able to play on whatever OS or PC you want.

[@AttilaKozma]

Macs are good for a few specific tasks and they are estethically beautiful machines, but for gaming they are very bad…

[@BlownMacTruck]

“A few specific tasks…” lol

[@adolfkudlinski]

All I need is Dying Light to work on macOS ... and it does great on M2 Pro at 120fps ... :-)

[@macgamer1973]

you take about 2. because intel versos well on my Mac Pro

[@jor_pat]

can you make a video on how to patch ryujinx with the latests updates to play totk?

[@Andytizer]

Yea I have filmed this and editing now.

[@faequeenapril6921]

Its a shame that Apple did that, because what valve did with proton and the steam deck gave us Linux users a ray of sunshine for gaming. We need as many OS systems usable for every day things including gaming because MS having basically a monopoly is not good especially when they have strict hardware needs for W11 and them announcing theyre dropping W10 support in 2025

[@AlfaPro1337]

This shows that Satan Gayben and Valve are lazy, and unsupportive.

[@Chapmike]

Adding support for Mac means Valve had to do global changes in Goldsrc and Source as well. During that period, Windows users had to endure updates filled with bugs. And then suddenly, Apple decides to drop 32-bit support. That means we had to endure those bugs to please a niche of players, just for it to be worthless in the end. But sure, Valve are "lazy and unsupportive". No, seriously, screw Apple.

[@AlfaPro1337]

@@Chapmike Pretty sure Source are D3D engine, thus, it shouldn't run on macOS NOR Linux based system. They have WINE or Proton. Not only that, with Apple removed 32-bit library, they could have made some 32-to-64-bit layer. Valve and Satan Gayben pretty much wants a full monopoly in the gaming industry, and neglect.

[@masoncombs7799]

​@@AlfaPro1337 You really think its as easy as, "just make a 32-64 bit layer?"

[@AlfaPro1337]

@@masoncombs7799 If Microsoft can do it, and paid Linux OS can do it, so can Valve. 😁 And modders who on their free time develop modding app can do it, so can Valve. 😁

[@masoncombs7799]

@@AlfaPro1337 so your point is whether or not it profitable or worthy of the manpower it would cost, Valve needs to develop software specifically because Apple doesn't want to cooperate, and Valve is greedy for not doing it.

[@flow1194]

So sad that all my mac friends don't get to experience portal 2. but at least proton allowed me to significantly shrink my windows partition (i need more storage)

[@macgamer1973]

wait what ?? Portal 2 is on Mac.

[@flow1194]

@@macgamer1973 it's 32 bit. it is on there but there are obstacles. too many for my friends

[@lenowoo]

Playing windows game through linux in mac. . . . .that was. . .very complicated

[@c6jones720]

I ws wondering about this, in this age of VR, you can develop and test a unity vr game on a mac, but you cant seem to run any vr games, or other decent flat games on a mac. On paper they look as if they ought to be able to do it.

[@tobi6758]

IMO the ultimate factor is return on invest. Of course dropping Vulkan was not helpful, but currently I see a bigger issue in the lack of a big customer base. The M1 Series of Macs is really the only hardware that could potentially run modern games (Compared to the Intel HD before) but at the same time it is quite new and many people haven't upgraded yet. So the total amount of capable machines are quite low still. Moreover we got the chicken + egg issue. Most people on Mac likely do not have gaming as their main priority thus would not spend much money on e.g. a AAA title. To have gamers buy a Mac there would need to be more games. So from a top perspective we have a still widely split user base (Intel vs. M1) + a lower likelihood to buy a game + a much lower market share compared to Windows + Console. But I do see a light at the end of the tunnel. As Apples M series gets more mature and increase market share, we could indeed see more games being officially adapted, which could result in a snowball effect. As the rumoured Apple Headset will likely receive a M2 chip as well and the iPad Pros and iPad Air already adapted the M chip at some point the customer base might be big enough to justify a Mac Port. The bad news is I would guess we need to wait until M4 or M5 for this.

[@macgamer1973]

I don't about that... My Mac Pro all modern games on Mac OS and Windows 10. Its apple /Tim Cook that cripple the Mac Pros

[@ridhwanadil6944]

Hey Andrew, I just made a detailed guide on how to get the EA App to work in CrossOver.

[@Andytizer]

Cool where can I find it?

[@ryanw2ooo]

What makes me sad about Apple souring their relationships with software developers is it mostly negatively affects the consumer. Why shouldn't I be able to drop into a GoldSrc or Source 1 game on my M1 Pro laptop if it can handle them with ease? It shouldn't be Valve's or the customer's responsibility to work around arbitrary restrictions on such a widely used operating system. I think if Apple cared as much about running games on their platform as they do about showcasing it, Metal would support OpenGL and Vulkan.

[@gnatinator]

A "wine" for MacOS is what Apple should be building for their proprietary OS. It's a massive undertaking, and it shouldn't be Valves responsibility to fund proprietary MacOS development.

[@abby8798]

When genshin impact 3.7 version comes can you show a tutorial?

[@AmritZoad]

I am gonna keep it real with you chief. I ain't gonna download any Raid Shadow Legends on my iPhone.

[@deathsyth8888]

Valve also gave up on counting to the number 3. Half-life 3. Team Fortress 3. Left 4 Dead 3. Portal 3. Overwatch 3.

[@Andytizer]

I’m not sure a lack of Overwatch 3 is Valve’s fault 😅

[@deathsyth8888]

@@Andytizer Overwatch 3 is the game sequel I'm glad that might never be made even if it's not made by Valve. Troubled game sequels just came to mind lil

[@bloepje]

There is another important thing: binary compatibility. Steamos+proton can run practically all windows games from early windows on. Most of those games don't work anymore on the latest windows. As a linux user, I highly recommend developers to stick with supporting proton, because that makes their game still playable in 10 years. As native games need to be recompiled. Of course, developers that wants to support native, please do. But I have a lot of linux games that don't work anymore, but the windows versions do work on linux on proton, and they probably don't work on windows anymore too. Anyway: Apple doesn't care about developers. They only seek to get the most out of their tightly controlled walled gardens. And Valve just showed them how fucked up that is. Imagine selling a game that you published on steam so many years ago, and people still buy it because they can actually still run it. On the mac you have to rebuild your shit regularly and pay apple tax. And still: it is free for Apple to take Valve's work and make proton work on Mac. But why would they? They are not known for R&D and advancements. The only advancements they make is into legal loopholes for usb-C and other ways to extort their users while their users gobble up anything they can get. The whole OS-X scene is about making it incompatible. Oh boy, I am sorry, I started ranting again. Usually I only do that with Microsoft. But I did give Apple a fair chance and really had a macbook and a macmini. But it was a big deception. The only reason they were open was because they used open source products and they could basically get sued for that if they were not forced to give back.

[@johnnyhellfire6]

Because valve can't count to 3. After they got everything done with windows and linux, they kinda just wondered off.

[@masoncombs7799]

They tried and Apple decided to break everything for no reason.

[@henryj5054]

Very good video! Not enthused by losing 10% of it to Raid Shadow Legends tho

[@RichardServello]

Proton on Metal would be so amazing :(

[@nathanlamaire]

No it won't xD The fact that current Metal 2 is now behind Vulkan despite having a head start, and Metal 3 isn't matured yet. Apple also couldn't care less on certain customer demands since they were all by 'proprietary' ecosystem (with only few selected open-source components). MoltenVK + DXVK compatibility is an ass and doesn't even work properly, although couldn't blame since it's best effort that Khronos Group would do for Apple customers. Do I need to mention that WebGL 2 to Metal also is extremely unreliable despite all browsers already matured on it. It sucked ass even with the most standardised API ever. Not even counting that WebKit is also been made poorly that it misses so many features and made life of web dev abysmal.

[@thorium9190]

Could we have a guide to using Wine on Mac? I’m having quite some trouble with it on my M1 Mac

[@Slurkz]

I think Crossover (based on Wine, but much more polished) would be a better choice. This channel has many videos covering Crossover gaming.

[@AyaWetts]

its extremely difficult to get it all working right... its worth the money to go with Crossover. Its worth it better to not use a Mac for gaming... I love my Steam Deck so much more than any Mac.

[@shanx5844]

MicroSoft is willing to spend 60B USD for Activation Blizzard because Gaming is in their core roadmap. Apple have even more money, if they see PC gaming as part of their future, they can pay develpers to do the port work, or pay developers to use Metal API just like what Nvidia did with DLSS and RayTracing. They don't do this because they don't care.

[@yt_user1772]

Nah cmon Macs are never going to be able to game.

[@yt_user1772]

I can just imagine seeing valve making windows games work on Mac and spending thousands of dollars on it but Apple gonna be like.. hey we have a new macOS version and now we only support 256 bit apple exclusive applications.

[@impheris]

maybe mac sucks...

[@waldo0022]

Great video as always ❤ I own a MacBook Air M1 I personally don’t use my MacBook for gaming. I use mostly for productivity or my accounting jobs. For gaming I use windows pc or the ps5

[@kian8382]

All work and no joy makes Mac a dull boy.

[@macgamer1973]

make Mac User to run around with Axe

[@PeleroK]

raid is till a thing?

[@unkown34x33]

Honestly... I would have gave up on apple too. They don't care! Simple. All their moves were against gamers, and windows/Linux users. If vavle would have stick with apple, they would have lost everything

[@ErikS-]

The past few years, Apple became more and more evil! They even screwed me whereby they block my 4,000+ USD Mac Pro from 2019, to upgrade to Ventura! So I decided begin of 2023 to see whether Linux would be an altenative! I am now 3 months "playing around" with Linux and I can recommend it to any other Mac user!

[@macgamer1973]

you really want your computer to look and feel like IOS?? Ventura sucks im happy with Monterey

[@DrAnimePhD]

Updating Valve's games to 64 bit is NOT trivial. Source 1 really does not like being 64 bit and the engine pretty much can't be updated to 64 bit. They tried to update Half Life 2 to 64 bit in the past. The result? The game ran horribly, so horribly it was unplayable. With how bad it ran they pulled the 64 bit update from the beta client and pretty much abandoned the project. You ever noticed how terrible CSGO runs on macOS nowadays? That's because the Mac client is 64 bit and as I said Source is really old and does not like 64 bit. It's why Dota runs much better and why Counter Strike 2 is getting a Mac version since they're Source 2. Source 2 is actually made for 64 bit binaries. So while it sucks Valve's catalog aside from a few titles is unplayable on modern Macs, it's not because they abandoned the Mac, it's because the engine is simply far too old and cannot handle it.

[@Andytizer]

There is a native Source client that has been put together based on a leak, and it has been updated to 64-bit and runs Half-Life 2, Portal, etc. natively on ARM Macs, I’ll be making a video about this in the future.

[@DrAnimePhD]

@@Andytizer Then why did you make a video saying "Valve's abandoned macOS" then shortly after saying "oh by the way there was a leak of the Source engine that is native to Apple Silicon and the games are playable"

[@ChimpRiot]

@@DrAnimePhD Maybe because Valve didn’t make it?

[@Andytizer]

Because the leaked Source engine 64-bit Mac ports are made by the community. If some hobbyist can do it with an old source code leak, then Valve could do it themselves very easily but they decided not to.

[@tonyburzio4107]

Until now.

[@nbrown5907]

Maybe all 3 major Operating Systems will be more compatible soon. Windows is building its next O.S. compartmented like Linux/Unix and Mac is based on the former so who knows. Windows was originally streamlined for faster direct access from my understanding.

[@gruntaxeman3740]

There have not been real problems in operating systems for ages. Compatibility issues are in some game engines. Games are almost all time required middleware to separate game logic from low level routines and hardware/OS so correct place to do work is game engine to make games compatible with platform. And it is game developers job to maintain game with game engine or make decision to create own game engine or use ready one. There are exceptions of course. Browser is separating application from hardware/OS so it is kind of possible to think browser as platform to make game. Old days Java was also doing that, so developing game top of Java SE was also possible. Of course all games are not possible to develop in this way.

[@nbrown5907]

@@gruntaxeman3740 Not my angle, but ty for that info. I was addressing Windows was better for direct hardware access in games and it was.

[@gruntaxeman3740]

@@nbrown5907 Actually Windows was perhaps one of the earliest that separated hardware from applications. It was DOS that allowed direct hardware access. Also sane game developers liked to jump from DOS to Windows to get hardware abstracted away. Direct hardware access should be avoided that game developer doesn't break the software. There are plenty of games that are actually broken because developer is optimized it to broken using fancy hardware tricks. Sure there are APIs to access hardware acceleration like OpenGL or DirectX. I don't see that there are essential difference on that.

[@nbrown5907]

@@gruntaxeman3740 Yes and the compartmented approach is a more secure approach so now that we have had these layers for years now MS is finally going to migrate to a compartmented design in WIndows 12 is what I am hearing. I thought that was quite interesting and wonder why they waited so long lol

[@nbrown5907]

@@gruntaxeman3740 Thank you for your insight.

[@cycledance]

Downvoted for promoting a predatory game.

[@Vlad-1986]

It is interesting to see. I don´t really even like macs, but I do love FreeBSD, and considering that macs use a forked BSD kernel, I always wondered... But yeah, I didn´t remember Macs have 0% 32bit compatibility and those weird proprietary frameworks, so not surprised it is nearly abandoned. Btw, what a stupid think to phase out 32 bit and literally kill any compatibility with older and not so old software overnight

[@AWellesley]

As you mention in the video, Crossover essentially is Proton for Mac. Codeweavers is an important partner for Valve, they’ve done a lot of the work on Proton. Releasing proton for Mac would cost Codeweavers most of their Mac Crossover revenue, damaging their relationship with Valve. So there are solid commercial reason for Valve not to release a Mac version of proton even if it would be quite easy from a technical perspective. No Mac version of Proton might even be a condition of the deal between codeweavers and Valve.

[@BibekGhosh88]

why waste time on mac or windows when you can get a totally free os which is really powerful as well

[@reahslademhA]

I think valve is doing something wrong. With the M series chips, valve should do 2 things: Proton, Steam, and games on not just the Mac. But the iPad as well.

[@UmbraWeiss]

Why? You talk about Apple, they are just a pain in the ass to work with, they want full control in everything i don't see why Steam needs to work with a company that don't want to cooperate with anyone, mac easily can support Vulcan, but they don't, because it's a 3rd party... Steam doesn't need Apple, and their Linux operating system will become the next windows for gamers in the coming years. The only reason no one develops games on Apple is because of Apple, they are so big of a pain in the ass it's not worth the time to develop games on it.

[@nathanlamaire]

You totally forget on SDK stack, it won't work on Apple's wall garden lmao. Do I need to mention that many of 32-bit games on Steam no longer work on Mac because Apple specifically blocked it form working?

[@valerabaglej7437]

That's a long ass sponsor dude

[@erato1]

if more games worked on Mac then there would be a lot more users on Steam.

[@theontologist]

Yes, but not enough to be cost-effective, and there is no guarantee that Apple won't break compatibility again.

[@diablosv36]

This is mainly Apple doing Apple things. Software and hardware designed to be thrown in the trash after a few years. Creating standards that don't work on any other platforms, not adopting open standards such as an API like Vulkan, creating artificial limitations. And on it goes.

[@BlownMacTruck]

Yeah, so true, despite iOS devices being supported for far longer than Android devices, and Apple Mac hardware having extensive support beyond average PC lifecycles.

[@diablosv36]

@@BlownMacTruck PC life cycle can be more than a decade, especially because you can change components very easily. Software wise well you run whatever you like on them, doesn't have to be Windows. Alot of Android devices can be used way beyond their official support with custom roms and such.

[@BlownMacTruck]

@@diablosv36 You do realize everything you just said could be applied to Macs, right? With the difference that while MacOS does start excluding hardware, the time it actually starts doing that, the hardware is already obsolete? Come on now.

[@diablosv36]

@@BlownMacTruck What determines the hardware be obsolete? Whatever Apple says I guess?

[@BlownMacTruck]

@@diablosv36 Look at their timeline of what they no longer support versus the responsiveness of the software on that list. It’s why no one really complains when hardware is eventually dropped from supported, because it’s so old people would replace it anyway. It’s usually FAR longer supported by warranties and official support than most hardware manufacturers bother - and just because it goes out of support doesn’t mean it immediately stops working (and in fact Apple will STILL roll security updates in older versions of MacOS even longer than “officially supported”,). This tropes of forced obsolescence is pretty much from people that only have a superficial understanding of Mac hardware and don’t actually use it and just say “but you can’t upgrade it!” (which itself is questionable). Oh and your whole part about Apple not embracing standards that you conveniently edited in after the fact - they do it all the time. The open source community both contributes and is contributed to by Apple in huge amounts. Their OS kernel is open source for chrissakes. Did they do it with an eye towards gaming? No. But throwing a blanket statement that they’re always doing proprietary things is laughable when developers often gravitate towards MacOS because the tool chains are so familiar to existing open source tools and are often completely the same.

[@foufoufun]

Nobody buys a Mac to play games. It's more like: "I only have a Mac and wish to play some games." Monopoly always sucks but Apple never really bothered and always worked toward their image of productivity.

[@macgamer1973]

I brought Mac Pro Server edition with Mac OS X server which killed off. now I program and play games

[@foufoufun]

@@macgamer1973 You can definitely play games and make games on Mac. It's just that you won't see Apple buying off game studios and promoting gaming features like Microsoft does. So there is barely any games on Macs because of that.

[@carrioncrow8191]

Apple moving to 64 bit, helped them get rid of a large portion of games, giving them an opportunity to push Apple Arcade. Now I have never been a huge gamer, but I have always preferred a dedicated system for games, and a switch lite was my answer, even though it is just another anti consumer company. When you have Luigi’s Mansion, you still have me, lol

[@AlijahSimon]

Apple ripped off the Band-Aid in the last five years and it was necessary for the future of Mac gaming. I know it seems stupid to depreciate OpenGL, remove 32-bit, and ignore Vulkan, but it’s not. It’s not fair that game developers were using native APIs like directX on windows, but unoptimized, third-party libraries on Mac. Mac owners deserve every bit of optimization that users of other platforms do, and Apple funneling developers into using universal 64-bit Metal architecture has done just that. The performance of Resident Evil and plenty of other upcoming games is crazy good thanks to this. What seems like stupid or controlling decisions in the short term will turn out to be highly fruitful in the long term. Mac is literally my only gaming platform; I own nothing else, and I am thankful that Apple killed off the inferior technologies so that all future games on the platform can be made correctly and scream as a result. ✌🏻

[@dexterhaxxor]

The problem with this sentiment is that if Apple makes their system too different from PC, game developers will just say "hell no we aren't supporting macOS". Unless Apple pays them money, it is not a worthwhile investment of time to make their games work on macOS. This is the "my way or the highway" approach which works for Apple only for things they are already good at, not for things they want to get into. If 25% of Steam users were Mac users, game developers wouldn't hesitate to implement Metal. Also, there is nothing inherently inferior about OpenGL. A well programmed, well thought-out and well optimized OpenGL game is much better than a Metal port thrown together in seven weeks to get it on Mac. Metal is more efficient and better designed, but it's only faster and superior when there has been as much time dedicated to it as the OpenGL port.

[@AlijahSimon]

@@dexterhaxxor the reason this is false is because iPadOS and iOS are already the biggest gaming segments in terms of financial profitability on the planet, unless I’m mistaken. Therefore, they can target macOS, iPadOS, iOS, and tvOS all with one code base. It’s not about making windows games and porting them to macOS; it’s about making Apple ecosystem games as a priority, just like Xbox, PlayStation, and windows are a priority. 🙂

[@EverRusting]

Can't blame Apple for not wanting to use OpenGL because "OpenGL" is just 1% OpenGL and 99% extensions added by NVIDIA (they are doing the same to Vulkan as well) Also it needs a lot of compatibility checks, meaning a developer has to check which extensions are supported on the target GPU and apply workarounds Apple wants none of that, they just want one good API that doesn't rely on hacks / bypasses / compatibility checks / workaround codes

[@dexterhaxxor]

@@EverRusting You have absolutely and completely no idea what you're talking about. None of what you said is even remotely close to true. Neither OpenGL not Vulkan require you to use any NVIDIA extensions to make a modern AAA game. Neither do you need any compatibility checks or anything like that. I've programmed many application that make use of OpenGL and Vulkan, and they are all perfectly portable across Windows, Linux, AMD graphics, NVIDIA graphics, Intel graphics and even Android GPUs, and I didn't have to write any code to account for every one of those platforms. Only Apple has problems running my code properly. Thankfully, MoltenVK exists which lets me use Vulkan on my MacBook, but it's still imperfect.

[@AyaWetts]

pure copium... this may be "ok" if you only care about running the latest game just released on the newest hardware and never playing it again the future. People said this same thing throughout history as Apple kills off things. All those games you are looking forward to (if they ever exist) will get killed off too in the future as Apple keeps removing the old and replacing with the new trying to force everyone to keep giving them money to only be able to use the latest thing. The only thing Apple cares about in Mac gaming is how many sales they can get in the Mac App Store.

[@flytie3861]

Do you game on Mac?

[@jhoughjr1]

Everyone gives up on Mac gaming. But Valve is just being lazy. I don’t care as I don’t game much any more. My max is for work. I game on my switch.

[@ananon5771]

for valve, its just not worth it to deal with apple.

[@vernearase3044]

While dropping 32 bit support and pushing towards metal may have seemed speciously perfunctory at the time, the _real_ goal on Apple's part was to push developers into a development path which allowed for the average Mac app to be compiled universal (binaries for both Apple Silicon and Intel) with a single checkbox in Xcode. Of course this alienated a _lot_ of game developers who _never_ go back and update their games save for minor compatibility fixes principally due to how the gaming model works, but for the vast majority of Mac applications it meant a far simpler transition from Intel to Apple Silicon. Hopefully, someday game developers will realize Apple's path was _not_ indifference but rather a strategic move to producing their own (and more capable) computing hardware.

[@macgamer1973]

no BG 3 beta work fine on my Mac Pro 2010 for a while , then one patch killed the support. I can instal the game until I launch it (look for M1 chipset). Apple don't want developers making games for M1 and Intel , they everyone to buy m1 this why RSE for m1 only

[@vernearase3044]

@@macgamer1973 I _assume_ that BG 3 is Baldur's Gate 3, but I have _no_ idea what RSE is. I assume also that you're talking about a patch to BG 3, the contents of which would not be under Apple's control.

[@elalemanpaisa]

macOS is a nightmare For gaming especially since they try to wall garden there shit eco system .. best example is lack of Vulkan

[@surplusking2425]

Just using Linux. Linux can run most windoze games with proton.

[@stevec5465]

And apple wants me to pay for arcade? What a pile of hot garbage.

[@macgamer1973]

I pay them ... getting ready cut them out because was hoping Bethesda would bring Fallout shelter, mighty doom, Skyrim pinball, Blade to Apple TV . apple pull games out of Apple TV that im paying them to play. I like owning my games

[@shrekenthusiast8703]

winehq still supports macos

[@ayanefuji]

Valve gave up on Mac Computer gaming when they started focusing on console gaming...

[@ayanefuji]

Wait, that actually sounds familiar... I wonder what company also did this...

[@ayanefuji]

Bro, I'm too busy playing my Dedicated Console BoXx to understand these references...

[@justinseans]

Windows forcing you to only use their store? LOL . That's not how that works.

[@AdmiralBison]

Gave up on trying to make Macs and iPads a proper gaming platform years ago. Since Apple had decades to make Macs and iPads a good gaming platform and didn't, they never will.

[@AyaWetts]

because Apple's idea of a good gaming platform boils down to only about how many sales of games they can make.

[@bltzcstrnx]

iPad is a popular gaming platform, especially in East Asia. Genshin Impact for example has 120 fps mode on Apple Silicon iPads, yet it is still locked at 60 fps on PC and consoles.

[@AyaWetts]

@@bltzcstrnx making comparisons by just saying "games" can be comparing things like Stellaris to Pong...

[@bltzcstrnx]

@@AyaWetts believe it or not, mobile is the number one gaming platform on East Asia and Southeast Asia. High performance gaming such as PC and home consoles are the minorities there. Most people play games on iOS, Android, and Nintendo Switch. In Japan for example, many games are iOS only and even more are optimized best for iOS devices. Even in China, developers like Hoyoverse mainly target and optimize their game for iOS and iPadOS for their primary platform. While still maintaining some support for Android, PC, and consoles.

[@AyaWetts]

@@bltzcstrnx Most people are into simple little games, and they focus on getting huge number of sales. Higher quality and immersive time consuming games are less commonly played. That changes nothing about me saying "games" is very vague and there are huge differences not being factored into peoples thinking. Its like saying something like "vehicle" and not taking into account a bicycle and a jet fighter are both vehicles, and there is a huge difference, even if bicycles are more common.

[@AR-ey1ur]

Anyone who uses Apples OS or Linux to game is a masochist.

[@nbrown5907]

1.4%? and you wonder lol. Need a bigger percentage that BS about the numbers didn't cut it with Valve either I bet.