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Counter-Strike 2 Lacks Mac Support, Update Breaks CS:GO for macOS
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I used to be a full-sized tower user, then a PowerBook/MacBook Pro user, and finally a MacBook Air because the MacBook Air is strong enough to do more than the previous MacBook Pro with quad-core i7.
Exactly. The gamers are gone. They’re just gone, nearly all of them.
...Then why has r/macgaming risen to 146k followers?
Why are the top 5 Mac GPUs all Apple M series on Steam?
The Mac is far from a major gaming platform, but to say that the gamers are gone is to misunderstand what a gamer actually is.
Just out of curiosity... what was the most recent game, say, released this year, you've played, Ishayu?
I'm tempted to play Lies of P, but am finding it hard to buy the game on macOS when it is "free" on GamePass PC. They should have worked a deal with Apple to get the game on Apple Arcade.
What the heck? Definitely not in general-purpose computing, it didn't. Maybe in gaming overall, for sure, because of the Steam Deck, but that's such a specific device that it's not really a good indicator when it comes to platforms per se. On desktops and laptops, macOS is probably still the #2 OS, even for AAA titles (albeit older ones, yes, because we've been seemingly abandoned).
Oh, but it gets better: I can GUARANTEE you the real numbers haven't changed that much from the Intel days, because of this little thing called virtualization and Windows 11's Rosetta 2-like support for x86-32-to-aarch64 translation. Except Valve et al. also chose to ignore that (I'm pretty sure they could collect data and ascertain how many of their Steam/EPIC Store/whatever installs are running on unusually powerful Windows-on-ARM VMs, as opposed to on Microsoft's lowly Surface products).
Methinks that's not a valid reason, either. The Mac had a much smaller marketshare before, and yet, there were ports of AAA titles to the extremely niche and aging PowerPC architecture, even before it was picked for some console generations. Sure, the transition to Intel made things easier, but to go from meagre support, to near-full support, to… nothing? Full radio silence? Actively borking functional installs on their paying customers' machines? Dude… Apple could have kicked their puppy squarely in the face, and they still wouldn't be in their right to do that.
Also, it's not like games have A LOT of dependencies, like professional software does, and couldn't be recompiled, as was announced well in advance as an immediate necessity, for x86-64 (which Rosetta 2 would handle perfectly fine, because all decisions made by Apple are multi-pronged and take future transitions into account, you just have to have two neurons in your brain and read the tea leaves), or even for Apple Silicon (because, duh, Apple also burns bridges, and that has been their thing for decades; if you do business with them you can't feign stupidity and paint yourself as a very surprised victim when the next and inevitable transition comes)…
In any case, most games now rely on engines, where the brunt of the work is done; and that *also* applies to DirectX/OpenGL/Metal. Hey, having OpenGL was also great, and Apple deprecating it was terrible, but with DirectX in the picture, the fact of the matter was that developers already had to support more than one graphics subsystem anyway, so moving to a DirectX/Metal world isn't much of an issue. Especially with tools like Vulkan/MoltenVK being available…
Dude, who cares about the Mac App Store? That argument may be valid for iOS/iPadOS (or tvOS, or even, in the near future, visionOS), where there is indeed a “walled-off garden”, but on the Mac it's a completely moot point… Also, you seem to be forgetting there's this little thing called… STEAM? Which Valve fully controls? They, and they alone, are responsible for behaving like children and leaving money on the table for no good reason (and, no, Apple “pissing them off” is not a good reason; the average customer couldn't give two ***** about whatever spat between those companies and just wants to buy some fun wares to run on their machine). Mac users usually have pretty decent amounts of disposable income, and those companies actually have the data to confirm it (as I've established before). That they chose to ignore it is not our effing problem.
True, Apple didn't make their life as easy as they would like, but no, it's not entirely Apple's fault. There's a lot of laziness and lack of goodwill on third parties' – *cough* EPIC *cough* – side, too.
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They didn't delete the game per se, they turned the servers off which I am sure they are legally allowed to do.
Yes I know about GPT but the objective of that tool is to evaluate if it’s worth porting your game to Metal, it’s not meant for end users so everything I said still holds true.
If you can port your game’s engine then great! More potential players for you but it’s an expense that you wouldn’t have to incur into if Apple just supported Vulkan like they previously supported OpenGL.
I also find the idea that Valve is threatened by Apple Arcade a little silly (no offense)
Not only have Valve’s efforts on the Mac died long before Apple Arcade was a thing (Valve cites Apple’s lack of interest for continued collaboration) but most importantly Apple Arcade and Steam serve two VERY DIFFERENT markets
There’s some overlap in the kind of offerings Apple Arcade has, like Shantae and the Seven Sirens, but for the most part the kind of games that sell on Steam do not even get a chance of being approved for Apple Arcade (if they even have an iOS port to begin with, which is a requirement)
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CS Go was local to my Mac and it is no longer there. Sounds like deletion to me.
Valve is legally able to do what they want with their servers but I don't think they can legally remove an operational and paid for game from my computer.
I will gladly play against bots or a LAN setup on CS Go if the CS Go servers are not present.
Regarding the recent Steam survey it's still worth to notice that like other surveys it represents a fraction of the actual numbers. They send a request to a few thousands randomly chosen users out of 132 million (2021) monthly active users and ask if they want to participate by sending their SW/HW data.
There are people who have been chosen 4 times in 18 years or people who haven’t been asked for 10 years. I myself got a request just yesterday actually two times, once on my Mac and once when using Crossover. I’ve had Steam for 15 years and as far as I remember this is the first time I’ve been asked or participated. Maybe I was asked before but didn’t participate but it can’t be more than a couple of times during these 15 years. That’s also why we some months see big changes in the share of Mac or Linux users. Two examples are Feb 2.37% and March 1.41% or May 2.39% and June 1.79%. Linux has had similar jumps too.
Some people seem to get the survey more frequently so I wonder if it depends on how you answer the first time. Perhaps if you participate once they will keep contacting you thinking there’s a bigger chance to get a positive answer. Even with the latest 1.43% Mac share there would be about 1.9 million monthly active Mac users but people just focus on the small share. That’s larger than the population of Turin, Warsaw, Hamburg, Budapest, Lyon, Stockholm or a small country and probably the reason many devs still port their games to Mac becuase they see the real numbers.
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Isn’t turning servers off discontinuing a service?
I mean, I’ve been lectured all my life that software/music/video/movie piracy was just like shoplifting (or carjacking depending on how much you stole).
So shutting off a service is taking away something real that someone paid for.
(Unless of course they want to change their stance on piracy. I’m open to it.)