Valve Says Counter-Strike 2 for macOS Not Happening Because There Aren't Enough Players on Mac to Justify It

[jamcgahey]

So the only nonapple products I own are my laptop and desktop, because I like playing computer games. Theres just so much more support for addons on PC.

Does this still make me an apple fan boy?

Also, fix the apple music PC app.

 

[mazz0]

RTX 4080 is $1.2k and Apple just made a major contribution to Wine with a DX12 to Metal wrapper in GPDK. Nice try though.

And what Mac has graphics to equal a 4080?

 

[mazz0]

I'm always curious about these statements.

What is the performance of a 'decent' GPU? And please don't say it's a 3070 like I saw on Ars recently.

Why not? Mid-tier last gen, sounds like a reasonable starting point to me. TBH though I’d say a 3060 would still count at decent.

 

[mazz0]

I got my new MBP 16" with M1 Max, 32GB and 32 GPU for roughly 1800€ (2000$). So you're gonna tell me, that this is not a decent Notebook for Gaming? In fact, the GPU is as good as a RTX 4060

Is it really? Can you link me to the benchmarks that demonstrate that?

They don’t sell the M1 Max now so I can’t do a like for like comparison, but you can get a new prebuilt gaming PC using a 4060 for less than £1,000, whereas a new Mac Studio with M2 Max starts at £2100, and it jumps up *sharply* if you want a better GPU.

 

[Ethosik]

I'm always curious about these statements.

What is the performance of a 'decent' GPU? And please don't say it's a 3070 like I saw on Ars recently.

Those statements are always too over the top anyway. Their entire argument goes out the window when you look at Nintendo Switch. The GPU on that is atrocious yet still gets more games than Mac. And some devs spend A LOT of work to port their game on the Switch.

 

[pp_amorim]

Imagine being Valve making millions of dollars per month for selling skins in Counter Strike.

Now imagine again being Valve creating a new version of Counter Strike (still a half baked product btw) not willing to support a brand new trend in processors and gpu power because the old statistics say only 1% of players use macOS.

Let be honest the macOS version of CS:GO sucked in the past, but also the hardware it was running on.

This was a perfect opportunity to gain macOS gaming momentum for Counter Strike (new hardware and new version of the game) and they decided to throw it away... to save money.

They don't have a player base because there is no player based playing the games that they don't create.

 

[rui no onna]

Those statements are always too over the top anyway. Their entire argument goes out the window when you look at Nintendo Switch. The GPU on that is atrocious yet still gets more games than Mac. And some devs spend A LOT of work to port their game on the Switch.

There are ~112 million active Switch players though. Just 1-2% of that is equivalent to the entire Mac user base on Steam.

There are ~120 million monthly active Steam players, more than 96% of them on Windows.

Mind, the Steam Deck has integrated graphics that’s effectively around GTX 1050 level. I’d say even the vanilla M1 has decent enough graphics.

iOS has a huge install base. This is where there’s potential for high returns. Caveat, very few of the iOS install base are willing to pay $50-80 for a game. Just look at the recent Resident Evil thread. Meanwhile, Witcher 3 was released on the Switch 4 years later and plenty of gamers still ponied up $60 for it.

 

[JamesHolden]

Linux used to have lower marketshare than Mac before the Steam Deck was released (like 0.9-1.2% iirc). Now Linux has overtaken Macs in a little over a year. Meanwhile, I believe the Mac marketshare has remained the same for like a decade.

Yes, the combined market for Apple chipset devices is huge (mainly iPhones and iPads). However, Steam makes their money from the 30% cut they get off game sales. Unless Apple allows alternate app stores on iOS, I don't see Valve being interested.

Agreed. However, ultimately these kinds of decisions come down to the numbers I imagine. If Valve saw enough value in supporting Apple's platforms, they'd suck it up and pay the 30% Apple Tax, but clearly they don't think it's worth it. I've been an Apple user for over 40 years and I've seen Apple stupidly cut off their nose to spite their face again and again when it comes to gaming. Whatever the reason(s), it's very telling that a company like Valve sees Linux as a more viable platform to support.

 

[JamesHolden]

iOS has a huge install base. This is where there’s potential for high returns. Caveat, very few of the iOS install base are willing to pay $50-80 for a game. Just look at the recent Resident Evil thread. Meanwhile, Witcher 3 was released on the Switch 4 years later and plenty of gamers still ponied up $60 for it.

Apple has trained it's iOS users to expect cheap software, so yes, I don't see iOS users paying $50-$80 for a game. I also think Apple is just a non-starter for serious gamers. Apple's platforms have always been mediocre for gaming. Apple has diligently built a terrible reputation among gamers over many decades. At this point, I think that reputation is just baked into the cake and I don't think there's anything they can do to make their platforms attractive to (serious) gamers.

 

[ctjrock]

Apple will never be a destination for gamers until they support the top graphic performance platform on the market. And right now and for the foreseeable future, that is Nvidia.

 

[Ethosik]

There are ~112 million active Switch players though. Just 1-2% of that is equivalent to the entire Mac user base on Steam.

There are ~120 million monthly active Steam players, more than 96% of them on Windows.

Mind, the Steam Deck has integrated graphics that’s effectively around GTX 1050 level. I’d say even the vanilla M1 has decent enough graphics.

iOS has a huge install base. This is where there’s potential for high returns. Caveat, very few of the iOS install base are willing to pay $50-80 for a game. Just look at the recent Resident Evil thread. Meanwhile, Witcher 3 was released on the Switch 4 years later and plenty of gamers still ponied up $60 for it.

Yes that is the reason. Macs having a 4090 won’t change things. People need to stop saying that is the only reason Macs don’t have games. You just proved why. If Mac user base was much higher, regardless of the GPU power, we would see more games. As this is why the Switch gets so many games despite its atrocious GPU.

 

[Nugat Trailers]

Apple will never be a destination for gamers until they support the top graphic performance platform on the market. And right now and for the foreseeable future, that is Nvidia.

Then why was the GeForce 1060 the most popular GPU on Steam for literal years? That wasn't the top graphics performer in 2021.

 

[rui no onna]

Agreed. However, ultimately these kinds of decisions come down to the numbers I imagine. If Valve saw enough value in supporting Apple's platforms, they'd suck it up and pay the 30% Apple Tax, but clearly they don't think it's worth it. I've been an Apple user for over 40 years and I've seen Apple stupidly cut off their nose to spite their face again and again when it comes to gaming. Whatever the reason(s), it's very telling that a company like Valve sees Linux as a more viable platform to support.

Valve makes money off their 30% cut off game sales. That’s one of the purposes of the low margin Steam Deck - to sell more games so Valve gets its 30% cut. Their primary business has long been being an app store for games rather than actual game development.

I just don’t see Valve sucking it up and paying the 30% Apple Tax.

 

[wegster]

Agree.

It seems they are admitting their game is kinda trash and wont entice new players on a different platform.

At best their game continues to survive on legacy players. Such a weird take.

You meant continues to survive where 98% of their actual players are?

Clearly some understand business plans, return on investment, support costs... and others don't.

 

[compwiz1202]

Catch-22

Exactly of course there are no players for a nonexistent version of a game. Maybe if they make gaming better with more good titles, people will get Macs to game. Same with EVs. Nobody will buy because infrastructure blows, but they won't build more because noone buys them

 

[wegster]

Apple needs to actively invest money into game dev companies as an incentive to build up the gaming market on Apple Silicon, badly. The hardware is there to run every game in existence, but the software is simply not compatible. If Apple is serious about gaming on Apple Silicon, pay them as incentive.

Pretty much. Either you have a large enough viable market share that makes offering <something - game, software, hardware accessory, ...> compelling enough that 'build it and they will come' works out, which does absolutely NOT apply to AAA games on Apple Silicon,
OR
you need to make it so painless that it's a 'this is pretty much free/painless to offer AND there is enough revenue to cover support/maintenance/testing/...'
OR
it becomes a real investment. Not like Xbox and Playstation don't have tens of millions of 'captive' purchasers on each of their platforms, yet AAA games are $100M+ investments, and there's still some big $ being thrown around by MS and Sony both to get exclusives, or ensuring various games are also on their platforms, etc.

At this point, Apple really needs to eat some humble pie as the attainable market of users on 'good enough' Apple hardware that also want to buy games on Mac over <gaming PC, console, ..> options is pretty small compared to other options, so they need to really both make it as easy as possible as well as some form of investment. It doesn't necessarily mean pay direct, but it could mean premium hand-holding support, improvements for migration and game dev minimizing MacOS specific effort in game dev, and some 0-fee deals on Appstore and free or near-free ad campaigns in Appstore... to start.

It's possible as apple silicon grows and other things happen that eventually it will be a sizable enough potential market that 'build it and they will come' will apply, but until then - more is needed.

 

[wegster]

Yes. That’s lazy. If they took four years, they have enough time AND resources to port the engine to the Mac with Metal. No excuse for it.

Except this basic financial reasoning called Return on Investment. AAA games run in the hundred to hundreds of millions in development, so let's be 'very optimistic' and say the Mac port 'only' took 1 year, and we'll go light on the cost, so 'only' $25 million for break even. The goal of businesses isn't 'break even' AND there are also addition costs to support each platform and it's user base on top of that, let's assume for simplicity double the dev cost to cover support, maintenance, bug fixes for MacOS over the life of the game. (Example #, each type of software has unique support costs to it, but it's probably at least 40% of the dev cost..). Now we're at $50M. Unless they could guarantee net revenue of somewhere around 3-4x that # or more - nope, it's not viable for most businesses to pursue.

So yeah, 'lazy,' or just math and business basics.

 

[surfzen21]

You meant continues to survive where 98% of their actual players are?

Clearly some understand business plans, return on investment, support costs... and others don't.

Stupidest take Ive ever heard.

Are we talking about the profitability of a company or a game design that entices a growing player base.

Clearly someone likes to deflect from the actual issue at hand.

What I do to invest and make money and what I do for pleasure are not the same.

 

[wegster]

$40,000,000 from gambling with a thin veneer of respectability. Loot boxes and CSGO skin trading have been well known to be gateways to problematic gambling for years now.


Oh geez, as a software developer, that sounds horrifying! There’s very real cost associated with context switches, moving between assignments on the same job (for instance, switching back to code you yourself wrote six months to a year ago still requires some time to become refamiliar with it), let alone switching between projects (even with very strong common coding practices). And, even as an extrovert, I like being able to go away for the day and work on some code by myself, because context switches suck that much. What’s more, that work environment sounds like the latest diabolical creation of whatever inhuman demon created open office plans and cubicle farms!

Everyone in dev needs 'cave mode.' One of the weirdest places I worked literally made all walls transparent inside the office, or at least 3/4 of it which was 'renovated.' I found the old cube parts, brought in a screw gun and built my own 'cave cube' just to get work done.

The flexibility bit might not be too bad, like the older Google '1 day a week pursue whatever' (believe this is now long gone), but it all depends on how it's handled. Like you said, coming back to your own code sometimes even a month later, let alone 6-12 or more, isn't always 'quick and easy.' No doubt someone will argue 'omg then your code sucks' but everyone winds up with TODO and 'OMG redo this later b/c it's insane' types of comments somewhere in the code they've written, even if 'most of the rest' is solid, clear, etc.

I guess they definitely make enough $ to see if it works for them though.

 

[wegster]

If they didn’t have Steam Deck, I bet you they would have dropped Linux too.

That's actually a very good point, and may well be true. Besides the much easier port, the Steam Deck has seen pretty good adoption and likely to grow.

 

[wegster]

4A didn’t do the same and 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.

Didn't know about the Apple involvement on those, but it is good news in they're at least coming out of their sheltered tower and are indeed at least making some real effort.

 

[Zest28]

Ofcourse, developers are not going to waste their time on Apple their propriety API. Metal is not the industry standard and even Blizzard is dropping Mac support because of it.

 

[eltoslightfoot]

So the only nonapple products I own are my laptop and desktop, because I like playing computer games. Theres just so much more support for addons on PC.

Does this still make me an apple fan boy?

Also, fix the apple music PC app.

Same here, and it's all gaming (and a smartcard issue with ARM processors for work)...I would love to switch to a macbook only...but all I have is an iPhone 15 Plus and an Apple Watch S6.

 

[wegster]

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.

Yeah, there's also the case of - how many with Macs that are capable of running modern games don't ALSO have a gaming rig, console etc. A super-quick search makes me think M1+ Macs are probably around perhaps 20M units shipped, but of them, how many are possibly unsuitable for some games (e.g. 8GB Airs..)

 

[thebrightsideoflife]

Except this basic financial reasoning called Return on Investment. AAA games run in the hundred to hundreds of millions in development, so let's be 'very optimistic' and say the Mac port 'only' took 1 year, and we'll go light on the cost, so 'only' $25 million for break even. The goal of businesses isn't 'break even' AND there are also addition costs to support each platform and it's user base on top of that, let's assume for simplicity double the dev cost to cover support, maintenance, bug fixes for MacOS over the life of the game. (Example #, each type of software has unique support costs to it, but it's probably at least 40% of the dev cost..). Now we're at $50M. Unless they could guarantee net revenue of somewhere around 3-4x that # or more - nope, it's not viable for most businesses to pursue.

So yeah, 'lazy,' or just math and business basics.

I think also porting from a Windows platform to XBox, Playstation is much easier than to a Mac as how I see it XBox is simply a scaled down Windows PC, Playstation is a little bit more work (different OS and graphic API) but Apple is a different beast so the investment here in doing so will be much higher. However in my gaming circle people making more jokes about when Apple will change the CPU architecture again due to every anounced one was the greatest one and got later abondend.