You know what? Valve gets a pass here. They tried really hard to make Mac gaming a viable thing and it just didn’t work out.
this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
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They tried but I wouldn't describe it as trying hard.
Steam client is still Intel only and runs via emulation on ARM Macs. They didn't bother to update their games with 64-bit binaries so most of their catalogue stopped working years ago. Their only remaining "modern" game, Dota2, keeps going because it's the only game to make that jump.
They're not referring to any recent efforts. Valve's push for gaming on mac happened years back, before the ARM transition was even a rumor. And even then, it was apple that stopped trying first, before valve did.
Valve DID try, but you're referring to things from AFTER they decided to cut their losses. Of course it's lackluster.
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I wonder if part of the reason is that apple deprecated opengl on mac os and replaced it with their property graphics api Metal. I image it would be a lot of work to port the source the engine to Metal just for a small amount of users.
Not just OpenGL, they also moved to ARM64 CPU architecture in 2020, which isn't any longer out of the box compatible with x86_x64 software. It requires extra work and optimization. Using a Mac for gaming is like shooting yourself in the foot. This is also unlikely to change, as moving to ARM64 would lose us all backwards compatibility. I always considered this move of Apple to be a mistake.
Gaming is far from their target market. ARM64 was a smart move for their market. The most commonly used apps are all faster with better battery life, and the transition was pretty smooth.
Yeah, when I had a Mac it felt like a big smartphone, and it's pretty good at being that.
I'm both shocked that nobody's glued together Unicorn Engine and Wine to make WinTel software run on anything, and obviously disinclined to dive into that deep dark hole myself.
Yup. The only reason I play games on macOS is because work gives me a Mac and I want to play games occasionally on it. My main gaming rig is Linux, macOS is just there for the odd 30-min gaming break.
CS2 uses Vulkan not opengl, apple still don't support it tho
This is a big one. Another one is that developing software for Macs is a huge headache compared to Windows, Linux, and BSD. The tooling simply feels much more awkward to use than most things available on other platforms, and the application packaging is so easy to mess up (not that every developer doesn't forget the occasional DLL...)
Macs are not for gaming, Apple made that very clear.
Only now that they've seen how much income they could have made, have they tried to backtrack.
Long live Linux Gaming.
TBF, they'd rather kill gaming on Macs entirely than not be the platform all those games are purchased through.
Could also be because of the Arm chips which add more burden on the developers who have to account not only for another OS but also for a completely different CPU instruction set.
How did Larian do it? Its not really a major studio, just average size. And Baldurs Gate 3 runs perfectly on it. The Mac Book Pro with the M2 gets rock staple 60 FPS on max in 1440p - even though its not the most demanding game, still really impressive for a Laptop.
Not taking anyone's side here, I'm merely saying that it adds burden (and thus costs) on the developers. Now whether the additional burden is worth it depends on how big the burden is (do they have lots of hand-optimized x86 assembly? or are they using platform agnostic libraries?) and the expected return on that investment, and companies will see these things differently. For Valve it wasn't worth it.
This is probably not as big of a deal as the lack of common APIs like Vulcan. I doubt Valve has much (if any) raw x86 code in their game engine, and it would probably compile to arm just fine. You still have to set up a new build chain for this, though, which is a pain.
Boohoo, won't anybody invest in Mac :'(
I'm thankful it's Linux native (still not unproblematic to run tho), so I feel for the Mac people. It's a bad feeling to be left out. I still want to play lost ark for example!
Ha! Got'em!
BG3 on Mac has enough players? It's a 🐔 and 🥚 problem.
If you build it, they will come.
no?, Valve tried, never gave any result, and linux surpasses it in a year of thet launch of steam deck, Apple also don't help fucking with opengl,vulkan and switching to Arm
My brother, the past twenty years, they've tried.
If you make weed legal, the number of people breaking the law will go down.
If you don't make any games for an OS, you won't have any players on that OS.
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