Same. I think I'm inclined to wait for the next one as most of my gaming nowadays is sporadic and on PS..
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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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Lol. Considering your other comments in this thread, that you've yet to make any case for, I'll happily take your first sentence and ignore from here on out. Calling Valve lazy, who is in fact a company who does indeed invest in order to you know - make money... ok, carry on, whatever.
Even back to the PS3 with the Cell 'unique' processor, the customer base was large enough cross-platform devkits and libraries came into play, but yeah, not enough opportunity size/market on Apple side (yet maybe, and diff companies will have different thresholds and expectations on ROI), but yeah, I'd expect Xbox and PC dev to be quite similar. Haven't looked at game dev frameworks in decades, but it would make the most sense, for it to be relatively trivial enough. Definitely not the case for Apple at the moment.
LOL on the last part (next CPU change). That one's kind of unfair. I'm definitely not an apple apologist and can be pretty critical of them at times, but they hit a dead end on PowerPC so didn't have much choice, especially on laptops.
The move off of Intel, well..... it does in general make sense after being burned numerous times of lack of notable improvements for years with Intel (who seems to have changed in more recent times with larger performance improvements, but it was pretty stalled there for a while).
I'm not a chip engineer although I do and have worked with some - I get some of the high level benefits of both ARM in general as well as the unified memory architecture, but what I'm not certain of is when Apple went to the M1, they were on a 5nm process while Intel was at something a fair amount higher. As this reduces, you effectively both improve performance and reduce power consumption for 'the same load', and Intel has been continuing to shrink their process, while it seems like beyond the first 'big jump' from Intel to M1, we're now seeing generally more incremental improvement in the Apple Silicon. I need to go spent a lazy day if I can ever manage one reading up more on AS specifics, but I'm not sure for example, where we'd be in a few years with both Intel and Apple chips on same process, especially as you know Intel was kicked pretty hard at the loss of Apple as a customer as well as the whole 'ARM growing adoption' overall. Will be interesting to see.
Meanwhile, undoubtedly Apple has higher profits and fewer external dependencies, so good for the financially and at least at the moment, 'probably' better for consumers due to their end-to-end control of HW and SW.
Not even Valve. After all, Apple Arcade doesn’t permit in-app purchases and this is freemium, I’m pretty sure. (CSGO certainly was.) Valve’s not going to leave THAT money on the table (even though, morally, they probably should*).
* Turns out they’re more complicit with the CSGO gambling than I had thought. Saw a YouTube video about it from a prominent CSGO content creator earlier this week.
You've... SEEN Blizzard in the past few years, right?
They've got faaaar bigger things to worry about than Mac support.
The game runs like **** in parallels on an m2max MacBook Pro 16in....theres no hope
Valve on Monday said it has no plans for a macOS version of the recently released game Counter-Strike 2, the follow-up title replacing the hugely popular FPS Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
Valve confirmed its decision and gave its reasons in a newly published Steam support FAQ:
Last month's release of Counter-Strike 2 forced a 26GB update for everyone with CS:GO, including Mac users, but after installation those on macOS soon discovered that the update makes the original game as well as the update unplayable because of the lack of support and no rollback option.
Valve now says Mac players will be eligible for a Prime Status Upgrade refund if most of their CS:GO playtime was on macOS and they played CS:GO on a Mac between the announcement of the Counter-Strike 2 Limited Test (March 22, 2023) and the launch of Counter-Strike 2 (September 27, 2023), regardless of when they purchased their Prime Status Upgrade. Valve will offer the refunds until December 1, 2023.
Valve added that those who wish to continue playing CS:GO on macOS will be able to access a legacy version or "frozen build" of the game, which has all the features of CS:GO except for official matchmaking. Support for this version of CS:GO will end on January 1, 2024. After this date, the game will still be available, but certain functionality that relies on compatibility with the Game Coordinator (e.g., access to inventory) may degrade and/or fail, according to Valve.
Despite Valve's refund offer to Mac users, the news that a macOS version of Counter-Strike 2 is not in active development will come as a bitter blow to many players. Though CS:GO launched all the way back in 2012, it's still one of the most popular FPS games available today, with tens of millions of players logging in each month. So even if less than 1 percent of the user base is on Mac, that could still account for hundreds of thousands of players.
Regardless of numbers, one of the reasons Valve is reluctant to develop CS2 for Mac is that Apple devices do not provide native support for the Vulkan API that the game is based on. Vulkan was designed to succeed OpenGL and address some of the latter's shortcomings, and while there is an open-source library called MoltenVK that provides a Vulkan implementation on top of Apple's Metal graphics API, it still lacks some of Vulkan's advanced features.
Article Link: Valve Says Counter-Strike 2 for macOS Not Happening Because There Aren't Enough Players on Mac to Justify It
They bout to get fixed since MS will own them shortly.... I mean that isn't going to help macOS gamers much, but the rest of us should benefit.
Lack of players is a lame excuse and is being used to hide the real reason which is Valve will want a quick return on it's investment. There is nothing wrong with that because they are a business after all. It is just a case of how many years are they prepared to wait before they see a return of their investment into making the game for the macos, 2 years? 3 years, 4 years?. I have no doubt those in charge of Valve will want to see a quick return on the investment of programming the game for the mac.
So, lets for argument sake say is costs Valve $20 million to program the game for the mac. The senior bosses at Valve want to see a return of investment in 2 years. They sell the game for $40 meaning they would need to sell a total of 500,000 copies of the game (250,000 a year) just to break even. Naturally Valve would want to see profits from the game but that would mean more than 500,000 copies of the game would need to be sold.
https://www.dexerto.com/csgo/how-many-people-play-csgo-player-count-record-2071859/
According to the above website, as of August 29th, the amount of active concurrent players online is 919,063. That will be Windows, Linux. Mac and console users. Now if Valve are saying mac users represent less than 1% of active players, that would mean based on current figures, the approx. number of mac users would be active mac 9190 players.
Now based on the hypothetical figures outlined above, Valve would need to sell 500,000 copies of the game in 2 years at $40 each just to break even. If there is only approx. 9190 active mac players playing the game, there is no way Value is going to see a return on it's investment.
Even if it cost Value $5 million to program the game and sold the game at $20 and wanted to see a return of investment within 2 years (very common in the business world), they would have to sell a total of 250,000 copies of the game just to break even with the 2 year time period.
The figures are just no good for Value no matter how they look at it.
So, lets for argument sake say is costs Valve $20 million to program the game for the mac. The senior bosses at Valve want to see a return of investment in 2 years. They sell the game for $40 meaning they would need to sell a total of 500,000 copies of the game (250,000 a year) just to break even. Naturally Valve would want to see profits from the game but that would mean more than 500,000 copies of the game would need to be sold.
https://www.dexerto.com/csgo/how-many-people-play-csgo-player-count-record-2071859/
According to the above website, as of August 29th, the amount of active concurrent players online is 919,063. That will be Windows, Linux. Mac and console users. Now if Valve are saying mac users represent less than 1% of active players, that would mean based on current figures, the approx. number of mac users would be active mac 9190 players.
Now based on the hypothetical figures outlined above, Valve would need to sell 500,000 copies of the game in 2 years at $40 each just to break even. If there is only approx. 9190 active mac players playing the game, there is no way Value is going to see a return on it's investment.
Even if it cost Value $5 million to program the game and sold the game at $20 and wanted to see a return of investment within 2 years (very common in the business world), they would have to sell a total of 250,000 copies of the game just to break even with the 2 year time period.
The figures are just no good for Value no matter how they look at it.
That's all well and good, but the game costs $0. The question really is how many kids will buy gacha loot boxes on MacOS. In March 2023, they sold $100-million worth of loot boxes in CS:GO, which CS2 has replaced. So whether the lack of Mac client is the result of economics, laziness, or dogma... who can say?
You neglected to say that money gained from loot boxes is across ALL platforms. Therefore that money will be fed back into the company to program the game for Windows, Linux, consoles and the mac. The bosses at Valve would be expecting mac sales of the game to hold it's own and not rely on money gained from the other platforms to support the games development on macos. If the games costs $0 to the user with Valve needing money to come from loot boxes, as I pointed out, there is approx. 910,000 active players in the game across all platforms and Valve is saying mac users represent less than 1% of the games players. That still means only approx. 9,000 mac CS GO gamers are playing the game and I bet not all of them are persistently paying for loot boxes. Even if every one of those mac players paid for loot boxes every day, it would still not come close to covering the costs of mac game development.
There are specific mac gaming threads within MR were gaming is discussed in detail and time and time again the same arguments are brought up, many game developers will not develop their games for the mac because there is not enough mac gamers out their to justify the costs and why is there not enough mac gamers? because Apple does not build mac gaming computers. To use an analogy from a baseball movie, 'If you build it they will come' rings true in my opinion with regards to mac gaming. If Apple was to build an affordable gaming mac computer, people would buy it.
$100M in one month. The cost of developing and maintaining a Mac client would amount to a rounding error. They've made a choice, and I don't believe it was economic to any significant degree. Gabe Newell just makes sweeping decisions regarding certain platforms that don't conform to Valves exact preferences and stubbornly sticks by it no matter how petty it looks, because they have FU money. He did the exact same thing with the PS3 15 year ago, because he didn't feel like bothering to write multi-threaded code (I'm not joking, look it up). So because Valve didn't foresee the rise of a mainstream non-x86 architecture 10 years ago, now they "just can't make the economics work." And yet, they only just.... finally... release Portal 2 on the Switch... 5 YEARS after the console was released. Hell, they were so stubborn about it, they designed and released an x86 based Switch clone BEFORE they ported any games to the switch.
All of that to just say, that Valve is gonna Valve. It will seldom make sense. It will occasionally make magic. And until the free money from Steam and loot crates dries up, nothing will change.
Also, they got snapped up by Activision, which in turn is being acquired by Microsoft. It ain’t the ol’ Mac friendly Blizzard of the 90s and early 2000s anymore.
You're not wrong, but WoW was one of the first and best native AS ports.
I wish your logic had any objective or subjective value but it doesn't. The trait of laziness and investing to make money are not mutually exclusive.Lol. Considering your other comments in this thread, that you've yet to make any case for, I'll happily take your first sentence and ignore from here on out. Calling Valve lazy, who is in fact a company who does indeed invest in order to you know - make money... ok, carry on, whatever.
What single platform are you talking about? MacOS, iOS, iPadOS, TVOS, or the new VisionOS.
There is probably some chicken and egg stuff going on here. Good ports of good games will lead to higher usage numbers which will encourage more good ports.
At the same time we have developers like CD Project Red who put extra effort into bringing their old games to Apple Silicon. Awesome! Maybe we'll get Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk after all.
www.thewitcher.com
"We are happy to announce that The Witcher: Enhanced Edition and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings will soon have Apple silicon M1, M2, and macOS Ventura support."
"However, we will be discontinuing support for OS X 10.7.5, OS X 10.8.2, macOS 10.15, and changing the new minimum macOS requirement to macOS 11.0. This is because the technology we are using, the JIT-compatible memory management and Apple's Game Controller framework, require a minimum version of macOS 11.0. These updates are necessary to provide support to Apple silicon chips."
"We want to ensure that players have time to prepare for these changes. As such, we are giving a 30-day notice before we discontinue support for these specific operating systems."
"To continue playing on macOS lower than 11.0, keep the old version of the game. To do it on Steam and GOG, disable automatic updates. On AppStore no action is necessary. On all platforms, if the game is uninstalled, the latest update will be the only one available to install. However, on GOG rolling back to an earlier version is possible."
Kitguru
Game is Hard
The Witcher: Enhanced Edition and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Mac System Requirements Update
We are happy to announce that The Witcher: Enhanced Edition and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings will soon have Apple silicon M1, M2, and macOS Ventura support.
"We are happy to announce that The Witcher: Enhanced Edition and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings will soon have Apple silicon M1, M2, and macOS Ventura support."
"However, we will be discontinuing support for OS X 10.7.5, OS X 10.8.2, macOS 10.15, and changing the new minimum macOS requirement to macOS 11.0. This is because the technology we are using, the JIT-compatible memory management and Apple's Game Controller framework, require a minimum version of macOS 11.0. These updates are necessary to provide support to Apple silicon chips."
"We want to ensure that players have time to prepare for these changes. As such, we are giving a 30-day notice before we discontinue support for these specific operating systems."
"To continue playing on macOS lower than 11.0, keep the old version of the game. To do it on Steam and GOG, disable automatic updates. On AppStore no action is necessary. On all platforms, if the game is uninstalled, the latest update will be the only one available to install. However, on GOG rolling back to an earlier version is possible."
Kitguru
Game is Hard
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While it is cool they are working on getting the older games compatible with the newer architecture, wouldn't their efforts be better used with getting Witcher 3 and CP2077 on macOS? Do the first two Witcher games not run on Apple Silicon?At the same time we have developers like CD Project Red who put extra effort into bringing their old games to Apple Silicon. Awesome! Maybe we'll get Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk after all.
The Witcher: Enhanced Edition and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Mac System Requirements Update
We are happy to announce that The Witcher: Enhanced Edition and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings will soon have Apple silicon M1, M2, and macOS Ventura support.
"We are happy to announce that The Witcher: Enhanced Edition and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings will soon have Apple silicon M1, M2, and macOS Ventura support."
"However, we will be discontinuing support for OS X 10.7.5, OS X 10.8.2, macOS 10.15, and changing the new minimum macOS requirement to macOS 11.0. This is because the technology we are using, the JIT-compatible memory management and Apple's Game Controller framework, require a minimum version of macOS 11.0. These updates are necessary to provide support to Apple silicon chips."
"We want to ensure that players have time to prepare for these changes. As such, we are giving a 30-day notice before we discontinue support for these specific operating systems."
"To continue playing on macOS lower than 11.0, keep the old version of the game. To do it on Steam and GOG, disable automatic updates. On AppStore no action is necessary. On all platforms, if the game is uninstalled, the latest update will be the only one available to install. However, on GOG rolling back to an earlier version is possible."
Kitguru
View attachment 2296847
Game is Hard
View attachment 2296848
I think I answered you in the other thread already. Maybe Apple has payed them or made a deal like with Capcom to bring Witcher 3 or Cyberpunk, or both to Apple Silicon and this was part of the deal as a warm-up. It could also be they see all these other developers bringing their popular games to Apple Silicon and want to test the ground with older easier ports before they decide to invest more resources in the future.
As for whether the games run or not they updated both to 64-bit 27 July 2022 but only for Intel Macs so they didn't run on Apple Silicon, not even with Rosetta.
I don't understand, why wouldn't they run on Rosetta (even if badly) if they are 64 bit? The whole point of Rosetta is the translate x86-64 binaries to AS.
Not every app works flawlessly in Rosetta so perhaps they could run but with major problems being such old games so the devs decided to not let it run at all. They wrote about the new updates ”the technology we are using, the JIT-compatible memory management and Apple's Game Controller framework, require a minimum version of macOS 11.0. These updates are necessary to provide support to Apple silicon chips.”
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CS 2 runs now well on Crossover 23.6.
www.codeweavers.com
CrossOver 23.6: Another strike against platform limitations | CodeWeavers Blog
By Meredith Johnson | The standout feature of this release is Mac support for Counter-Strike 2!
www.codeweavers.com
And Codeweavers has had a contract with Valve to work on Proton for over 6 years. So yeah, as a technical problem this whole thing is non-existent.CS 2 runs now well on Crossover 23.6.
CrossOver 23.6: Another strike against platform limitations | CodeWeavers Blog
By Meredith Johnson | The standout feature of this release is Mac support for Counter-Strike 2!
It can be done if apple stop acting like a re tar in gaming sector or maybe making aggressive moves like Microsoft do ?
Crazy buying game studios that make real games ? Or even invest in valve and partner up with them ?
Just for CS 2 or even co host E sport championship of DOTA2 ?
Release new portal game ??? There’s a lot apple can do if they want to do it