Which is why I think this was some screwup that they’re not acknowledging yet.
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Counter-Strike 2 Lacks Mac Support, Update Breaks CS:GO for macOS
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I dont seem to share whatever nitpicking you have for steam. I play tons of games on mac thru steam and the application works great.
Do we need more native support? Of course, but that is also partially apple’s fault. Steam has made a significant amount of games available on linux because they put in the effort trying to launch their hardware.
Where is apple besides sitting back and hoping developers just voluntarily use bespoke systems to reach a small market…porting kit is a good beginning but apple needs to care
I dont seem to share whatever nitpicking you have for steam. I play tons of games on mac thru steam and the application works great.
Do we need more native support? Of course, but that is also partially apple’s fault. Steam has made a significant amount of games available on linux because they put in the effort trying to launch their hardware.
Where is apple besides sitting back and hoping developers just voluntarily use bespoke systems to reach a small market…porting kit is a good beginning but apple needs to care
I think they’re making a comment more on the hardware state of the pc side than the software.
depends a lot on what you play, but mac support has steadily waned recently. first it was when macos lost 32-bit support (some games would no longer work), then when ARM macs were released (no native client and additional games not working well with rosetta). this is the first i have heard of them intentionally making a game no longer work versus something losing support due to an Apple decision.
I know Valve has made some critically acclaimed games, but I feel they’re overrated. They release a new game once a decade, and in the meantime, they write terrible software. Steam on macOS is absolutely horrendous, while on Windows, it’s usable in terms of performance but still has clunky UI/UX. It’s amazing how a company with a virtual monopoly on the video game market can’t have AAA software to match.
Like seriously, where’s Left 4 Dead 3? Half-Life 3?
Like seriously, where’s Left 4 Dead 3? Half-Life 3?
Yeah its a grievous oversight to just drop counter strike mac support in this manner, full stop. I get it, i felt the loss of 32 bit support and got an m1 on launch so from bootcamp to the present it’s quite a difference. But…
This is apple’s fault
Metal 2, Game Porting Toolkit, and now Gaming Mode on Mac OS 14 are just three examples of Apple showing a desire to bring high quality games to Mac and supporting developers.
As for Valve, they can hardly complain about the closed wall system that is Apple, you cannot buy Valve games unless you install their horrendous Steam bloatware that is not even a Universal binary on Apple yet. I'm still waiting for No Mans Sky to be released in the App Store and will pay a premium on the game if necessary to avoid having to use Steam.
disagree. other game developers do just fine working on mac. valve chooses not to.
IOS is closed. MacOS is not. The tools to create games on MacOS are available to all and you do not have to distribute through the Mac App Store (obviously).
Many if not most of the largest gaming developers do not because their systems have years of legacy development that they are not rehauling anytime soon to bring most aaa games to mac. This trend is changing slowly and valve circumvented the issue with proton but mac is for the most part just waiting patiently for decades long shifts to trickle a handful of games to the platform
can’t disagree. i’m not sad though - i’m more of a console gamer and I don’t do micro-transactions. i just like seeing the developers who make the effort.
It pushed it to me. I can see hardcore fans be frustrated with this. Luckily for me most of my gaming is done on PS5 and other game titles.
It's not just Mac support that is gone. Half the game is missing, including but not limited to:
- Danger Zone (CSGO's Battle Royale mode)
- Team Deathmatch
- War Games, including Flying Scoutsman
- Arms Race
- Half the maps including popular maps like Agency, Train, and Cache
- Accessibility features like left handed mode
- The server browser currently does not work
- Achievements are all gone
- Map centric Terrorist and Counterterrorist models are gone, as the only defaults now are the SAS and Phoenix Connection models
Until the recent Steam upgrade, I got games exclusively on the App Store. Steam, shockingly enough, used to be 1000 times worse on Macs than it is today. It would literally freeze if you had it open for 5 minutes on a separate monitor.
To be fair the Steam client for MacOS is not compiled for Apple Silicone so take that as a sign on level of commitment. If someone decides to spend $500 on things that don’t physically exist then really they have no grounds for complaint. Jack bought magic beans. At least he could plant them. It not like there is not a growing list of free to play games that have shutdown. You may as well just send $1 to happy dude. What you get for your money is the same as purchased game content.
Counter Strike has been available on macOS since Counter Strike Source in 2010. Valve even updated CS 1.6 and Condition Zero to be able to run on macOS in 2013 (and then Catalina took that away lmaoooooo)
With 1.5 million concurrent players at all time and Counter Strike being the #1 most played game on Steam, of course people expected CS on Mac, especially when Counter Strike 2's Steam depot had a Mac version listed in it.
Yeah they ain't doing that when the game is still getting millions of players and day one of CS2's launch netted them $40,000,000 from the skin case loot boxes.
As revealed in Geoff Keighley's book The Final Hours of Half Life Alyx Half Life 3 and Left 4 Dead 3 were in development but quietly cancelled in 2013 due to being overambitious. Half Life 3 they wanted to make it a roguelike and Left 4 Dead 3 an open world set in Morooco with dynamic time of day and weather systems and even more zombies. Both their plans were too much for the Source Engine to handle and they lacked any direction on what to do so they decided to give up on the projects and work on something else. (Seriously you need to read this book it's a fantastic read as Valve just lays it all out, as well as having development footage of the games they were working on before they made HL:A.)
Half-Life: Alyx - Final Hours on Steam
THE FINAL HOURS OF HALF-LIFE: ALYX is an interactive storybook, written by Geoff Keighley, that takes fans inside Valve Software to chronicle the company’s past decade of game development, including the return of Half-Life.
Valve's business philosophy is you can work on whatever project you want. Their desks are all on wheels and can move freely from room to room because of this as anyone and everyone can jump to whatever project they want. A common saying around the Valve office is "oh, bring your desk" a saying that is joked about in their Steam Deck tech demo Aperture Desk Job. Because of this philosophy we got incredible developments like virtual reality and the Steam Deck and well, STEAM, but of course it means game output isn't what people want. But hey, would you rather they just rushed Half Life 3 out and it be not what you wanted, or would you rather let Valve cook and make something that even you don't know you wanted? Because I've gotten so much use out of my Steam Deck and can play more than I could before since I can take my PC games with me now, to the point I use it more than my main rig.
Also Steam ain't a monopoly lmao. There's more launchers on PC than Steam. Steam's just the most popular.
It's not entirely open. There's still some factors of macOS that make it closed, most notably APIs. macOS Mojave depreciated OpenGL, which Valve used for their Mac ports of games. When OpenGL depreciated they moved to Vulkan, while Apple wants everyone to move to Metal, which Valve doesn't like because they prefer open standards which is why they heavily support Linux development, even making their own Linux OS that powers the Steam Deck.
It's unlikely Valve will start supporting macOS again unless Game Porting Toolkit fixes their problems, which time will tell.
It's looking like the only thing Valve will support on macOS is Steam at this point since that requires the least effort.
Shouldn’t the EU enforce them to make it available to all platforms. That is what they want for everything
Very consistent since the early macintosh days. One tradition Apple has kept and never changed.
Likely those folks saying 300fps is too low also have 144hz 4k display. In that sense, 300fps is a bit low. Those people do need 600fps.
Or just discontinue steam on Mac altogether in spite of recent legal battles between Apple and epic or just leave out of distaste, whatever reason they feel.
The Steam they have is powered by Rosetta, not native application. The support will likely drop the moment Apple drops Rosetta 2 support.
Can they? Does valve even meet the definition of gatekeeper?
They're not gonna drop Steam for Mac. They make too much money from sales of Mac games to do that. Just like with Catalina they'll just quickly patch it.
They do not because here's the thing people (especially Epic Games defenders) keep forgetting: YOU ARE NOT FORCED TO USE STEAM. You wanna make a PC game, you don't have to use Steam. You can just launch the game on it's own like Escape from Tarkov did, or use a different launcher like GoG or the Epic Game Store, or even your own launcher. If Steam was the only app distribution platform on Windows Mac and Linux they would be a gatekeeper, but they aren't.
You know why Steam is so big? Because it's a vastly superior service to competitors. It's why so many games skip out on releasing their Mac versions on the Mac App Store because it's a horrible service compared to Steam. Apple is labeled a gatekeeper because on iOS/iPadOS your only choice for app distribution is their store.
Still need rewrite for native Apple silicon support, something I am not sure valve would do.
I should note they are currently making an ARM version of Steam...for Chromebooks
I don't know why either but hey there you go. Hopefully Apple Silicon support will arrive once Steam for ChromeOS is done.
Chromebook arm is still different from Apple silicon arm. But we will see. As for me, almost all games I play are either on PC or on iOS, so macOS steam doesn’t really bother me much.
I mean ARM is ARM, just like x86 is x86. There's nothing special between Intel Mac x86 and Windows x86 or gaming console x86. It's just x86. The only difference being the APIs.
It's all about money. Mac gaming is a direct competition to the Steam Deck so it's easy to see where Steam is focusing their resources.