Actually, they kinda do take responsibility for mac gaming. They helped develop https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK which basically runs Vulkan on Metal. The Linux version uses Vulkan, so in theory it shouldn't be too hard to port, they just didn't.
That’s funny because my son compared CS2 on my MacBook Pro vs his RTX 3060 PC build we put together last winter and he said how much more responsive the game felt on the Mac.
That it works is one thing. That it always works as expected is another. Apple doesn’t want to take responsibility for that, and neither does Valve, when there’s not enough paying customers on that platform. It is what it is. Now the Proton layer is one thing, because Valve is selling Steam Decks. They will want that to become a big thing. They’ll go back to selling Steam Boxes (the living room console thing).
We were discussing who supports the product. But interestingly CodeWeavers is responsible for over two-thirds of all commits to Wine, and the company also employs Wine’s primary maintainer, Alexandre Julliard, as its CTO.
They ship an outdated and unreliable implementation 😅 There are things that use it, but my understanding is you couldn’t use it in the same way you can on other platforms.
Steve Jobs quite openly hated the idea of anyone gaming on a Mac because he felt like it made their products seem more childish or something. It seems like either nobody at Apple has managed to dig that particular brainworm out yet or have just decided that printing iPhone money makes all other concerns irrelevant.
So…how long before Apple realizes that game devs are notoriously time-crunched and forcing them to target yet another proprietary graphics API is a stupid move for their gaming ambitions?
I'm not convinced they'll ever realize the problem with their strategy. They'll keep half-assing it every couple of years and wondering why they don't have a larger gaming audience.
Yeah, they keep trying to bring their walled-garden approach to gaming and it just won’t work. It’s like trying to build another console in the current gaming market and unrealistically expecting it to take off.
It’s also why I think the Vision Pro, despite how cool and innovative the tech might be, is also DOA.
It’s telling that Apple is trying to develop Proton-like tools for macOS, but even Valve, who are very actively developing them for Linux and have invested in porting software to macOS for years, are sort of giving up. Apple is so, so bad at working with game devs, it’s amazing. I’m guessing they did their own thing internally and just published it instead of actually working with Valve and listening to the industry, as always.
Honestly? Kinda hate cs2. It runs worse (3080ti btw), most of my smoke grenades no longer work, they removed team deathmatch, they removed short competitive matches, and you can no longer play csgo. The more I play the less I’m a fan
It’s on a new engine and is technically a new game but Valve overwrote cs:go to make the inventory changeover work afaik. Lots of people seem to not know about the beta option to play GO, I think Valve should make a better process to access it so more people know that it’s an option.
I get the feeling it was pushed out before everything was ready. I am willing to bet that all these missing features are coming later. Not sure why they didn’t just wait before pushing out the game. The smokes are just different, players just need to adapt to new mechanics instead of using the same grenade tactics that they’ve memorized for years.
Yeah they haven’t confirmed whether these features are making it back I believe, but they really ought to and I expect they will too. Smokes Im fine with. Mostly just annoying since the game feels almost identical to GO. A lot of smokes still work too so it’s kinda trial and error to find which ones work now and dont.
I also find it annoying I can no longer see how much I damaged an enemy via console, but that’s fair enough too.
The fact that CS2 feels, looks and plays the same as GO did was the biggest aim by valve and wish from players. This was the goal: Redo the game in a new engine. Thats what they did. We can argue if there are inportant features missing or not, but the same feel but reworked smokes is both a feature which most of dedicated players wished for
I am in that camp, honestly! I just miss my old features and there are some quirks and growing pains. I really miss most of all short competitive. It was much lower stress and commitment. I can only play so many games and to be stuck in a one-sided long one feels bad. I am just a bit underwhelmed overall, but perhaps it is my expectations.
I think much missing stuff is going to be coming. I think they just didn’t want to delay CS2 any longer. CSGO is still playable from the properties panel. You can enable a legacy CSGO mode. Not sure about matchmaking though.
On my 3060ti with max everything I always have over 200 fps, but yes, definitely not as fast as CSGO still. What fps are you getting?
It seems odd not to have TDM from the outset. I somehow doubt turning off team damage or shortening the match length requires a huge dev lift. Maybe some surrounding infrastructure but still. On the FPS, I’ll have to check! It feels like a lot lower than 200. I only have 144hz anyway so it must be worse than that
In terms of numbers (according to the Steamwide statistics, which may be different than CS:GO), MacOS isn’t that far behind Linux in terms of usage. I get that Valve is pushing Linux and all, but this a bit scummy (saying this as a Linux user)…
Unless there is more Politics involved. My understanding (and I may be wrong) is that developing software for Apple is basically a quagmire of regulations, proprietary lockout and big pits you need to pour money into.
Also, strictly reading help.steampowered.com/en/…/73EF-08A3-0935-6369 they didn’t say that they were discontinuing it BECAUSE of lack of playerbase, but that they didn’t expect it to have much impact due to the small playerbase. Low player count is probably one reason, but I suspect there might be more factors in play.
EDIT: I know the article does mention the API issues, but I’m just a bit annoyed that they decided to title it the way they did for clickbait.
For games, a big one is that none of the common APIs are supported, apple just supports Metal and nothing else. There are compatibility layers, but it's a hurdle.
Apple just shoots itself in the foot with proprietary APIs that nobody else supports. Why should Valve write an additional translation layer for an OS that’s less used than Linux? macOS was always bad for gaming, it merely got worse.
Your understanding is not quite correct. The regulations are for App Store apps only, which wouldn’t affect CS2, and even if they did, they are not much different from other platforms’ store regulations (no strong adult content, no gambling aides, no games that encourage you to damage peoples’ hardware, you can’t make games that would put private citizens’ safety at risk, etc.). And the only money you have to pay is for a developer subscription, which gets you code signatures & anti-malware validation.
Valve’s statement adds that players using DirectX 9, 32-bit operating systems or macOS “represented less than one percent of active CS:GO players”. Dumping these platforms makes sense from that perspective, but it’s a bitter pill to swallow for the Macintoshers amongst us or those who, for whatever reason, play on very old PCs.
I wonder if part of the reason is that apple deprecated opengl on mac os and replaced it with their property graphics api Metal. I image it would be a lot of work to port the source the engine to Metal just for a small amount of users.
Whoopie got mad and called out Blizzard for not releasing Diablo 4 on Mac. I think it was on tiktok.
"This is what I’m asking you, Blizzard Entertainment,” Goldberg said, “This is Whoopi. You know how much I love Diablo. I would like y’all to let those of us who use our [Macs] to play. Allow us to play on the Apple. Take Diablo IV and let us do it and have a great time.”
This is hilarious to me for some reason. Like, goddamn Whoopi Goldberg loves Diablo so much (and on a Mac no less) that she went and called them out on a public tiktok?
I’m all for games being as cross-platform as possible, but considering how Apple doesn’t offer apps such as iMessage, Facetime, etc. on other platforms, I’m less sympathetic to them for this.
Apple users chose a famously closed ecosystem, so they shouldn’t be surprised when some things aren’t available to them.
The issue here is that Counter Strike Global Offensive did have official Mac support. Then when CS2 came out, Valve replaced the CSGO client with CS2, rather than making it a new client, and then announced they’re cutting Mac support. There is still a weird way to launch GO, but good luck finding players to play against now. It was pretty shitty of them to not leave GO as its own client or to not continue supporting Mac. This isn’t quite a case of a new game not having Mac support, what happened from Mac users’ point of view is their counter strike game updated and now they can’t play it anymore.
My point is that they’re just cosmetic, unlike gacha games or other free to play games where you’re FORCED to buy loot boxes to unlock good weapons and items.
A casino REQUIRES you to spend money in order to participate. CS2 does not. Big difference.
I haven't checked in on Counter-Strike in a long time, but we can and should call out shitty business practices designed to exploit gambling addiction to make you play when you don't want to. I'm not equipped to assess whether CS is designed that way, but gaming in general is not predatory and addicting in this way.
It isn’t. There’s no grind to get better weapons so that you can remain competitive with other players and no paid lootboxes that give you an early advantage. You start out with the standard set of weapons just like any other player and that never changes. The only addicting thing about the boxes in CS2 is that they look cool but I’d say that that’s more on the player to decide whether they want it or not.
It’s like saying providing the ability to paint your car is an addicting business practice, which I don’t really buy. This is not the same as pay-to-win and the distinction should be made here.
You get no advantage from the battle passes in Street Fighter 6 either, but they're still designed in such a way to keep you chasing the rewards. It can be scummy without being pay to win. But again, I don't know what hooks CS2 has. Last I played CS:GO was when it was $15 and had no microtransactions.
But because they have no impact on the gameplay, the onus is entirely on the player whether they want it or not. At this point you’re basically saying that they made the battlepasses and lootboxes interesting and therefore they’re bad
No, I'm saying I've seen people who keep playing games with this kind of battle pass, loot box, or other reward system when they clearly stopped enjoying the game, the same way any addict keeps doing something they know is harmful to themselves. Systems like these (and again, I have no idea what kind CS2 implements, but it's a modern online live service game, so it's probably in the ballpark) just want you to be a body in the online queue so that other players have someone to play with, and they chase that goal through nefarious means.
But because they have no impact on the gameplay, the onus is entirely on the player whether they want it or not
Not really. A bunch of F2P games have lootboxes that give you a chance at better weapons / characters early on instead of going through a long grind. The set of CS weapons is the same and does not change.
The community gets upset when it becomes pay-to-win. I wouldn’t consider CS to be pay-to-win though so I find the casino comparison a bit inaccurate.
You’re the one who brought up the idea that the game is a casino. A casino is pay-to-win, because you literally have to pay money to participate and having more money gives you advantages.
This is not what CS is. You don’t have to pay money to participate and there are no upgrades weapons or characters as a result of paying more money.
A casino is pure gambling, there’s no parallel game attached to it
What are you talking about? Blackjack, poker, literally any card game…these are all parallel games that accompany the gambling. You can play these games independently of spending money. Casinos just make it pay-to-win by offering bets and larger payout tables for high-rollers, etc.
It might surprise you, but people understand what CS is.
Except you because you can’t make the distinction between CS and a casino. That’s why I am explaining it to you. CS is a competitive shooter first where none of the loot box mechanics affect actual gameplay, which is more than you can say for a majority of F2P games. A casino REQUIRES you to pay money to even engage in it. I don’t get what’s so hard to understand about this.
I’m talking about addictive gambling, I’m not talking about selling pay to win advantages.
Stop moving the goal posts. Your whole point was calling CS a casino, but there’s massive differences between the two that you seem to gloss over. Now, if CS offered higher damage weapons, more health, etc. and the only way to get them was via loot boxes, then sure, I’d agree with you, but that’s not what CS does. Calling it simply a casino is just being reductive.
I mean... if Apple makes it a shit platform to support, this isn't a surprise. Valve can control the entire environment on Linux. If something goes wrong, they can look at the code of the kernel. On Mac, they have to ask Apple for support. For <1% of the player-base, that's way too much of a hassle.
They’ve made Linux gaming a thing. And there where no players there either. So I do not believe that is their actual reason.
The actual reason is that Valve does not want to be beholden or locked to a corporate entity like Apple or Microsoft. They would be very dependent on the whims of those companies.
Linux gives them a platform where they know and can influence it’s future.
As a user of an ecosystem that I care about, I totally do not. Why should the health of an ecosystem be dictated by my usage patterns or that of people that I know? Bit self-centered, also?
Also, today’s Apple fans and their “Apple-no-gaming” fiction are too quick to “forget” Bungie and how upset Steve Jobs was when Halo became Microsoft-exclusive. arstechnica.com/…/jobs-turned-down-bungie-at-firs…
I have a feeling this response is directly related to how Linux users for yeeeeeeears have been told "we won't support Linux because there just aren't enough users to justify it". Now that there are official more Linux users than Mac users it makes sense to support Windows and then Linux if you can only afford to support the 2 biggest operating systems, but yeah, I really think this is more about Valve pulling a switcheroo on the usual "not enough users to support Linux" line we always hear.
Of course, that's what I was implying. The Steam data set for Operating Systems includes the Steam Deck under "Linux" which is why it's suddenly jumped up above iOS users. I'm saying that I think Valve employees are obviously Linux enthusiasts and have heard that line from video game developers for years, so now it's giving them a little bit of schadenfreude to say it about iOS users.
macrumors.com
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