It means that Valve has a commitment to make Linux more viable for gaming than it might otherwise be. That is, they’ve got skin in the game and an investment on the line. They’ve got none of that when it comes to Macs, so there’s little incentive to develop for Macs even if Macs might be more viable for gaming for a company that doesn’t have Valve’s Linux investment. So it’s not viability per se, it’s suitability for Valve’s purposes.
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Valve Says Counter-Strike 2 for macOS Not Happening Because There Aren't Enough Players on Mac to Justify It
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...which is really just an Apple-fan-centric way of saying that Linux is a more viable gaming platform. Valve's got skin in the game because they obviously see potential in Linux that they don't see in the Apple world.
Bottom line is, if AAA game developers considered Apple's platforms viable, they'd be making the investment there, not Linux.
It’s more that Valve sees value in supporting gaming on Linux, on account of the licensing fees to support Windows. They can’t license macOS for their hardware, so macOS is a non-starter for them. Valve is only one developer, though. Do other big name developers have the support for Linux that Valve does? Better yet, does Activision-Blizzard have the support for Linux that Valve does? When Microsoft is forced to support Linux gaming that’s when you know Linux is truly viable for gaming.
Proton is absolutely horrible with NVIDIA graphics cards though. I tried it but faced so many issues.
Linux users? Maybe. Linux users that game? Agreed with you. I use Linux for my single purpose items like some of my NAS devices.
There are good reasons why Valve sees Linux as a better gaming platform than macOS.
1. Linux supports Vulkan. This is very important for game developers because they can develop for both Windows and Linux using the same code base. On macOS you are left with nothing but Metal. Although Metal is a great API, the extra efforts are probably not worth it.
2. Linux is cheaper. And by cheaper I mean performance per dollar. Hardware running Linux or Windows can easily have double the graphics performance for half the price. Apple Silicon has great efficiency, but its performance is far too expensive for regular gamers.
1. Linux supports Vulkan. This is very important for game developers because they can develop for both Windows and Linux using the same code base. On macOS you are left with nothing but Metal. Although Metal is a great API, the extra efforts are probably not worth it.
2. Linux is cheaper. And by cheaper I mean performance per dollar. Hardware running Linux or Windows can easily have double the graphics performance for half the price. Apple Silicon has great efficiency, but its performance is far too expensive for regular gamers.
4A used MoltenVK to port Metro Exodus. They even asked Apple for help to optimize it and Apple Metal engineers helped them for free just like they helped Larian with BG3, Hello Games with No Man’s Sky, Piranha Bytes with ELEX II, Capcom with Resident Evil Village and more. Valve doesn’t want to put any effort into Mac.
Linux being "cheaper" is a decision for users not developers to make. If the user base is large enough the price of the HW doesn't affect devs, only users so Valve has no saying in this. People do what they want with their money. Mac users have already made the decision of buying "expensive" Macs but the price they have paid doesn't make their platform worse for gaming for that reason.
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I'm glad most of us are agreed that Apple's the one at fault here. Too many burned bridges and dropped balls.
I don't understand why Apple thinks they can play hard-to-get all the time. Eventually her suitors are going to simply move on.
I don't understand why Apple thinks they can play hard-to-get all the time. Eventually her suitors are going to simply move on.
Until apple buys its own studio and starts producing quality exclusive games for its platform, gaming will go nowhere on a Mac.
They pay a lot of lip service but very little action that produces results. It has been that way for many years.
They pay a lot of lip service but very little action that produces results. It has been that way for many years.
It's really only possible because Steam is a money printer. And even then, word is that they've dialed back this childish idea of a workplace and started putting some structure up around projects. If their survival depended on being able to put out new games then they'd have changed their ways a lot sooner.
I think Valve came up with this during a time when gaming on Windows was crap - mist be Vista or Windows 8
I think MacOS is mostly IntelMac due do Steam on M1 runs only via Rosetta. I have tried it a couple of weeks again and it is a nightmare and deleted the Steam client.
They are not lazy - it is simply the market share and due to CS is in the area of competitve game play you are laking the hardware. In the Windows world you simply have to wait whether a new CPU or GPU get released instead to wait for a complete system whenever Apple decides to release one and which you cannot upgrade. The upgrade posibility is the biggest advantage - as a gamer I have only to check whether my CPU/GPU are able to run the games in certain modes I would like to play visualy. In case of an upgrade either swap CPU or gpu (card) or a complete new motherboard. That's the flexibility you have and which is with Apple not possible - therefore I do not see any serious gamer to switch the platform.
I assume you are using Intel/NVidia (AMD drivers are unstable therefore AMD grafic card are not an option)?
I'm on AMD, RX6800. Latest AMD drivers on windows 11 giving me erratic hard freezes where I have to crash CS, sucks mid match. Debian 12 gnome/wayland with flatpak steam running stock 6.1 kernel will get some stuttering (seems to be related to new smoke and molotov's) but I havent had it freeze yet.
That’s why Apple needs to be precise on which games to fund. And nobody cares about the devs. These are publisher deals. And if a publisher can get their game on one additional platform with no additional costs they‘ll do it. Apple then just needs to figure out how to build up on this. First fund the port of some classics and recent games, then get a few of the popular online multiplayer games on there (lol) and maybe fund development of future games for timed exclusivity.
I think it’s a shame because it discounts the ability of the Mac to grow as a gaming platform. It’s at least 10 percent of the total personal computer install base, and a lot of those machines are M-series Macs, which means they are kind of equivalent to a PS4 and quite capable of decent gaming performance.
But it’s a chicken-and-egg situation, if the people who buy Macs are generally not so into games because the games that interest them are not there on the platform, then how do you get them into games? There are publishers who make the effort, for example the Total War series.
I do think that if Apple want to grow gaming on the Mac they need to give it more visibility in portals where it matters, like the Mac App Store.
It’s a shame Valve went purely by the numbers and minimised the effort, because Counter Strike can be a lot of fun.
But it’s a chicken-and-egg situation, if the people who buy Macs are generally not so into games because the games that interest them are not there on the platform, then how do you get them into games? There are publishers who make the effort, for example the Total War series.
I do think that if Apple want to grow gaming on the Mac they need to give it more visibility in portals where it matters, like the Mac App Store.
It’s a shame Valve went purely by the numbers and minimised the effort, because Counter Strike can be a lot of fun.
I think this is a good point about hardware upgrades. In my last few windows builds, rarely do I swap out my MB, CPU and GPU at the same time. Im running a 2080ti but a newer AMD CPU. For the games I play it is working fine.
I think Apple would have to show its hardware can run games at 120fps before being taken seriously. 60fps in multiplayer first person shooters is trash.
For some reason this newly released game (also on Windows) was done and performance seems pretty good: