****. I remember when have a game hit 30 fps was a big deal. I guess it's time to look into an assisted-living home.
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Counter-Strike 2 Lacks Mac Support, Update Breaks CS:GO for macOS
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Something is wrong with your setup. Nvidia themselves claim they get 543fps in the game with a 4090.
Back in 6502/Z80 days, making application available on machines with those processors usually took a considerable amount of work. I believe the same situation also applies today.
Regardless, only time will tell.
Apple's hardware for gaming is garbage anyway, none of you would enjoy the experience. Now go and buy your shiny new $4,000 MacBook Pro, give Apple ALL your money, they need it more than you do.
Not really, the major difference is that 6502/z80 were severely restricted in memory management and limited to 8bit integers, this doesn't apply to modern cross platform.
Now imagine how trash performance would be on Apple's hardware LOL.
If only there were GPUs that could be put inside Macs for gaming.......
Valve sells the Steam Deck at a loss lmao. Plus the Steam Deck's competition is other handheld PCs. Valve's focus is making Linux more popular, which is why they made the Deck to get people to try out Linux.
If they were worried about direct competition they wouldn't be bringing Steam to Chromebooks
I have also become largely a console gamer because 299 to play starfield is hard to beat. I still play a lot of games on mac tho.
Heroes of might and magic 3 through vcmi
Morrowind thru openmw
Starcraft, StarCraft 2, warcraft 3
Divinity original sins 2 and baldurs gate 3
Civilization 6 and stellaris
Rimworld and factorio
There are a lot of games for mac that run great on m1+ hardware dont get me wrong and consoles largely mitigate needing a gaming pc but…i miss x86 bootcamp days
Valve this week released Counter-Strike 2, the highly anticipated free upgrade for owners of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, but Mac owners were left in the lurch on launch day, with the upgrade breaking the game and seemingly no macOS version forthcoming.
The title's release on Wednesday forced a 26GB update for everyone with CS:GO, including Mac users, but after installation those on macOS soon discovered that the update essentially makes the game unplayable because Steam subsequently attempts to launch an executable file for Windows. Some users have had to employ a workaround to reverse the change and access CS:GO, but it's less than ideal.
Valve quietly removed the macOS symbol on Steam's Counter-Strike product page, while the only reference to this omission for Counter-Strike 2 appears in Valve's official FAQ. A question about Mac support is met with the response: "No. CS2 is not available for Mac at this time," but provides no additional information.
Regardless, Valve apparently failed to adequately warn Mac users, many of whom have racked up thousands of hours on CS:GO and spent hundreds of dollars on inventory purchases. One Mac gamer on Reddit wrote:
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is one of the most popular and long-running games on macOS, with a large community following, so the lack of support and transparancy from Valve for Mac users upgrading to Counter-Strike 2 is all the more bewildering.
Based on recent updates to the CS2 macOS depot, some users believe a Mac version is in development, but it would likely relate to Rosetta 2 rather than a version that natively supports Apple silicon. With no word on the subject from Valve, this remains purely speculation.
The long-rumored game, officially announced in March, updates many much-loved maps, and uses Valve's in-house Source 2 engine, featuring sharper textures, more realistic lighting, and new geometry. We've reached out to Valve for comment on this story and will update readers if we hear back.
(Thanks, Scott!)
Article Link: Counter-Strike 2 Lacks Mac Support, Update Breaks CS:GO for macOS
Apple needs to take AAA gaming more seriously.
I know Apple has a particular interest in something called (I think) Apple Arcade, but if AAA game developers aren’t showing the Mac enough love because of its (low) percentage in figures of total personal computers sold, Apple needs to incentivize them in other ways. (Anyone remember the first version of Halo that was supposed to come out? 😠)
Pay them for development costs for Mac versions. Give them no interest loans to develop games for the Mac (with perfect parity with PS5, PC, etc.).
Send them Apple software engineers to help them code and be advised of macOS features they may not be availing themselves of (or are not fully aware of).
Listen to developers in terms that how Apple could make programming games for the Mac easier/better for game designers and coders.
Develop new APIs and Frameworks accordingly — or implement recommended changes to existing ones. (But not polluting macOS with Microsoft junk.)
Apple used to have “Software Evangelists,” and I think it was Guy Kawasaki who was assigned this role for liaising with game developers.
But if Apple wants NO ISV games on the Mac and wants everyone to use Apple Arcade, I guess we’ll just have to live with it.
(But I don’t have to like it.)
I think hardware abstraction and APIs have made for a lot less work than programming directly to hardware like back in the day.
Also, you practically couldn’t get an app to run (without taking “a year” to respond to input — or to anything) unless you programmed it in straight Assembly language. High level languages were almost useless except, perhaps, for educational purposes. (But BASIC was the worst language for teaching beginners how computers “worked.”)
The 6502 and the Z80 clocked at a mere 1MHz and 4MHz, respectively.
Assembly language was it. (And it was pretty hard for the average individual — not exactly “User Friendly.”)
(With the possible exception of Forth, a niche, fairly high level language that could somehow compile and run code as fast on these CPUs as if it had been written in Assembly — and occasionally even faster! Though I’ll never understand why…)
(I’m open to expert explanations…)
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Putting platform ahead of games gets you what you deserve.
Put the artform—the game—first, and buy the right platform to play it. Waiting around for the Mac to become even a third-class citizen in A-level gaming is an excellent plan for being forever left out and forgotten. If it makes you feel good to put platform first, far be it from me to try and convince you otherwise, but honestly, there are so many great games out there. Go and explore, and don't be afraid to adopt other platforms to do it. The water's great, jump on in.
Put the artform—the game—first, and buy the right platform to play it. Waiting around for the Mac to become even a third-class citizen in A-level gaming is an excellent plan for being forever left out and forgotten. If it makes you feel good to put platform first, far be it from me to try and convince you otherwise, but honestly, there are so many great games out there. Go and explore, and don't be afraid to adopt other platforms to do it. The water's great, jump on in.
“B-but this Apple silicon hardware is so amazing! And why I can’t have one device to do everything, including gaming? Why it is so hard?”
That’s what you usually get from the groups criticising the lack of games on macOS.
Maybe those folks just don’t want to admit Apple platforms suck at AAA gaming. All that’s left are free to play ones and nothing much else. There is a reason why essentially a remake/remaster of resident evil 4 coming to Apple platform is such a huge deal for exclusive Apple users.
Apple chose to go with Metal (for justifiable reasons) and I know that is one huge barrier for game developers.
Even if Metal is faster and better, it’s still a barrier (possibly even a deal-breaker?) for many game developers.
DirectX 11/12 or Direct3D? NEVER!
But OpenGL? I dunno…
I hear OpenGL is bloated and hobbled by ancient legacy cruft even worse than Flash.
If it’s possible, Apple could develop a Rosetta-like translator for Metal — not at runtime, but during the development process, where PC, console or other game-oriented API code is translated into corresponding Metal code before compiling.
But I’m sure there are plenty of areas where there’s no 1:1 translation for such a programming tool, so developers would still need to get their hands dirty in Metal.
But your point about putting platform over outcomes is well-taken and makes the company sound a lot like “old Apple.”
(I mean, at least directly support Vulkan!)
Yay for game mode./s.
The only game I play on any Apple platform now is COD mobile, we all know it’s days are numbered once Microsoft gets it hands on Activision. Serious gaming on Apple is dead. ☠️
“The Borg” will “Halo” it.
I currently play it on Steam in bootcamp but was concerned about running it when I eventually get a new Mac.
I heard that the Gog store version will run under Crossover (or Parallels) but I was not familiar with vcmi.
Yes, he said/wrote so. But... can you imagine the horror, that he cannot continue doing so on the macOS platform?
Offline (single) player games have one advantage over the multiplayer-only (always on/connected to server games) and that is, that they can be played as long as you like, without the fear, that they wont work*. Especially these, that have skirmish mode and are supported by community with source ports, modifications (mods) etc.
*Of course that doesn't mean, that one day a new OS will come out and the game will simply not launch, but we can assume, that there will be emulators in the future for such tasks too.
For online games, that won't help much, since the servers will be long go.
Why doesn’t the EU just outlaw this type of gatekeeping behaviour, regardless of company size?
Such a thing probably won’t come from Crossover or Parallels, but by one or two innovative programmers (just like how most breakthrough innovations happen), but someone needs to code a comprehensive Windows/x86 emulator or “virtualization instance” for Apple Silicon Macs, where ingenious programmers do a LOT of GPGPU optimization coding (as much as humanly possible!) to get it to approach speeds of a native Windows/x86 machine (like the Mac used to be).
I’m often reminded of Steve Wozniak who used to obsessively revisit his Assembly language or “machine language” code to see if there were any possibilities for him to tighten up the code or eliminate steps to save a processor cycle or two or to spare a memory register or two, to make his app run the same only more efficiently, less resource-intensive and faster.
(And always bear in mind, when you’re thinking about the amount of RAM in any recent Apple device — be it an iPhone or a Mac — it’s shared RAM; shared between the CPU and GPU.)
I don’t know enough about GPGPU coding to know if a programmer knows for certain that no more serial tasks can be performed parallel on GPUs instead of the CPU in a given piece of software — or — if there is always room for more GPGPU improvements to be found upon close enough inspection.
This doesn’t even include other blocks on Apple silicon like the Neural Engine, AMX coprocessors, ISP, ProRes engine, etc.
(And, yes, I do realize that they all use different data orders/structures/operational functions/context switching, but for serial CPU instructions that are suitable— if they can be performed faster — I wish there were programmers genius enough to maximize their use for general purpose instructions — to make a fast Windows/x86 compatibility environment for Apple Silicon Macs.)
If it’s the case that, for instance, the ProRes engine doesn’t have to be used specifically for what it’s “supposed” to do, but can be tasked with instructions for non-image-related, non-codec, non-graphical-purpose vector and floating-point arithmetic faster than the CPU cores, it should be exploited in cases where speed is such an important consideration — like a Windows/x86 compatibility environment.
This all requires a lot of very unconventional thinking for any normal coder — but foreign platform compatibility environments are a wildly unconventional undertaking on their own.
Maybe this will have to wait for M3s.
I’ve read that the A17 Pro SoC is within reach of Intel i9-13900K and Ryzen 9 7950X processors in single-core performance — and those are DESKTOP processors!
I can’t imagine what the performance will be on the forthcoming desktop class Apple M3 SoC!
(I just hope not to be disappointed.)
1 hertz = 1fps. 144hz would still be 144 fps and no where near 300. I think original comment mistakenly added a 0 to 30 and 60.
Another offline advantage is that you don’t have to hear any gamer words (unless they come out of your own mouth).
Pretty disappointed in Valve for dropping support. I hope they add it back. I was a big CS gamer on PC back in the day and now I casually play CS:GO on my M1 Mac, so I was sad when this CS2 update broke that.
I agree someone must have really messed up by allowing this large update to get pushed to MacOS users when it doesn't work. The funniest part is Steam trying to launch an .exe file on MacOS.
In the meantime, I've been using GeForce Now to play CS2 and with a solid internet connection, it runs and looks extremely good. Granted the heavy lifting is done on a RTX 4080 in the cloud.
I agree someone must have really messed up by allowing this large update to get pushed to MacOS users when it doesn't work. The funniest part is Steam trying to launch an .exe file on MacOS.
In the meantime, I've been using GeForce Now to play CS2 and with a solid internet connection, it runs and looks extremely good. Granted the heavy lifting is done on a RTX 4080 in the cloud.
Unsurprising
With Apple deprecating OpenGL we’re gonna see less and less games making their way to the Mac
Sure Capcom will throw us the occasional resident evil for some reason (my guess is Apple helped porting RE engine to Metal) but everyone else is not gonna bother unless they’re using an engine that altready supports Metal
Or just going thru MoltenVK I guess, but it’s obvious Apple doesn’t care much for those solutions.
Honestly if Apple ever wants gaming to happen on Mac they need to stop trying to get everyone to use Metal and support Vulkan
But there’s way more money to be made on casual mobile games anyway, so they literally have no reason to
Ironically we’re the only ones with a 64bit client, for whatever that’s work
Oh and we finally have GPU accelerated rendering on the webviews now, hooray?
App’s still Intel only and runs like a dog on AS, even resizing the window is a struggle 🤷♂️
With Apple deprecating OpenGL we’re gonna see less and less games making their way to the Mac
Sure Capcom will throw us the occasional resident evil for some reason (my guess is Apple helped porting RE engine to Metal) but everyone else is not gonna bother unless they’re using an engine that altready supports Metal
Or just going thru MoltenVK I guess, but it’s obvious Apple doesn’t care much for those solutions.
Honestly if Apple ever wants gaming to happen on Mac they need to stop trying to get everyone to use Metal and support Vulkan
But there’s way more money to be made on casual mobile games anyway, so they literally have no reason to
Yeah it’s always been terrible
Ironically we’re the only ones with a 64bit client, for whatever that’s work
Oh and we finally have GPU accelerated rendering on the webviews now, hooray?
App’s still Intel only and runs like a dog on AS, even resizing the window is a struggle 🤷♂️