this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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It's actually second now.
Linux now has more steam users than MacOS
Which, as an ex MacOS user, is a mindboggling fact it took this long.
I guess people just trying to do things with what they have. I had a friend who plays LoL on a Mac. She also used Steam on it but there were very few games.
I was in that camp as well. Personally, if gaming got better on Mac I'd go back in a heartbeat. If you have a specific title you like that's support it's really nice, but anything else is a layer of compromises to get things up and running :/
Aren't modern Macs literally not able to run games due to them being arm?
ARM isn't the problem. Some games have native ARM ports, and x86 games can be run by Rosetta. It's not as fast as native, but broadly comparable with the performance of the previous gen Intel chips they replaced.
A bigger problem on macOS is that they dropped support for 32-bit software a few years ago in Catalina. Not a problem with newer games, but it decimated Mac users' Steam libraries.
And the biggest problem is that Apple just doesn't give a shit about gaming. Every few years, they claim they're going to do games, but quickly forget about it. They've never put decent video cards in Macs, and never hesitate to throttle hardware if proper cooling would mean a larger enclosure, so AAA games typically arrive on macOS years late, when second-rate or integrated video cards can run them.
If they actually cared, they'd have their own Vulcan implementation. Instead, they're focused on their own proprietary Metal API.
Basically, Apple and AAA game studios have been ignoring each other for decades.
that's IF they arrive at all. Many studios/publishers just don't care about lower hardware anymore. If it doesn't run on current day hardware they don't release it for it. Especially with Linux and Mac. The best time to get a release for the the two would be release day, after that it's diminishing results
I firmly believe that with the move to ARM, they gutted macos gaming capability past the point of no return. You used to be able to say that you could run compatibility layers on it but, the new architecture makes it super hard to do so. Even virtualizing it via VirtualBox is a pain in the butt on the new system. I've just been telling customers if you want any type of gaming support, choose anything but the new macs.
It depends, actually. You can stack translation layers to take things from x_86 -> Arm and stuff intended for Windows -> MacOS. Depending on your solution sometimes you need to use Microsoft's x86 translation layer and some times you use Apple's.
This takes a pretty big hit tho. And for a long time DX12 was an issue, but with Apple's release of the GameDev porting kit (intended for developers) you could now do play those titlss through a WineBottle. Many users did this (myself included) and I think commercial products like CrossOver are able to have the same functionality. Playing D4 on my base m1 was kinda wild.
It's honestly kinda fun if you like tinkering, but not ideal if you care about raw performance. Ultimately tho, my Linux system is just easier now, but if I get curious if I can run a game on the thinnest laptop I own I reach for my Mac.
What do you think mobile games run on?
You won't find any of those on Steam...
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/gettingstarted/mobile https://topgameslists.com/mobile-games-on-steam/ https://www.androidpolice.com/android-games-on-pc/
I could keep doing this. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of games on Steam that started on mobile.
Not that this matters because the entire fucking point is that NO, Macs aren't "unable to run games because ARM" when almost all mobile games run on ARM and they get ported to non-ARM processors ALL THE FUCKING TIME.
Are Linux users just unable to think beyond what's literally in front of them?
True though point being here Steam is a PC platform so it doesn't have ARM games, it has ports of them. So yes, unless you use some kind of emulator, ARM Macs won't run Steam games let alone Steam.
...are... you... fucking trolling?
Do you not know what a port is? Are you not aware that numerous modern game engines don't even need to be ported, they just run on multiple platforms?
Macs being ARM based has FUCKING NOTHING TO DO with there being few games for the platform.
Apple has never courted game developers. They have never been about absolute gaming power. They're about developers, media production, and general use audiences. They do not build gaming computers. Any gaming capability is ancillary to their actual business model.
If a developer doesn't see a potential ROI on porting a game to Apple silicon, they won't. It's that simple.
Why would I trolling? And why are you so angry?
I did not say this is about Macs having few games, it's about the microprocessor architecture, hence x86, ARM etc. ARM is still not powerful enough to handle bigger games, unless the devs specifically design their game for ARM, it won't run. This is not about game engines can compile for every operating system, it's about the architecture the game runs on. Also, game engines don't magically compile your game designed for Windows to other OSes, you still need to use native libraries, which technically makes it a port.
There used to be many AAA games for Macs, like Call of Duty and GTA. They don't port their games anymore because Apple don't care about gaming and don't use powerful GPUs on Macs. Also, if Apple will only produce ARM Macs from now on, of course they won't get any of the games because ARM is completely different architecture and devs won't bother with it because they need to hire people specialized on ARM.
ARM will probably become more powerful in the future but it's not something so soon. I'm talking about maybe 10 years? Anyway, there is also RISC-V and game companies are more interested in this than ARM.
Oh just fuck off.
Yeah, just what I thought.