This is far from a black and white answer. A lot of the first gen steam machine ‘ports’, including those from Valve, Aspyr, Feral and Virtual Programming used source code level wrapper libraries to convert D3D calls to OpenGL. This added a little bit of extra overhead to the port so a lot of these early ports suffered a little slower performance (in my opinion an average of about 15% slower). These ports were compiled from source code so they were still native ports, if a little half-assed for time and manpower’s sake. As time went on Valve and VP’s wrappers improved to the point that you could get 1:1 performance or sometimes much better performance running the port under linux (for example VP’s wrapper would multi-thread the renderer even if the original D3D renderer was singled-threaded). Feral went on to re-code a handful of their later ports from D3D to Vulkan, again, achieving better performance under linux. A few game engines were written with linux in mind from the start, such as The Talos Principle/Serious Sam 3, and those titles, in my opinion, would be best to use to compare the relative performance of the two OS’s at that time.
Nowadays you still have a fair amount of indie titles coming out with native linux support. Not many larger titles in recent years, but you do still get some such as Psychonauts 2 and stuff from Paradox. Proton has gotten so good now that many games will run better on linux from day 1 than on Windows-steal-yo-data-11.
macOS is BSD based, not Linux based. Different graphics underpinnings as well. Apple has released some helper layers to assist in porting, but it’s still no cakewalk.
In the earlier days of OS X this was true. A port from one to the other was somewhat trivial. However, Apple has done Apple things and tried to invent their own gaming library API after killing off OpenGL support on Macs and they’ve probably been up to some other buggery since then as well. Porting to Mac is probably equally as difficult from Windows now as Linux, and Linux has overtaken them on number of people who are playing on Steam.
They still have some pretty old version of OpenGL and Metal was a bit before Vulkan, so it’s sort of a lightning vs USB C situation.
I don’t believe that it was easy. Since it started macOS was based on BSD, not Linux, which is quite different. They also use different types of binaries and the similarities between kernels should end beyond the BSD compatibility layer. See https://wiki.freebsd.org/Myths#FreeBSD_is_Just_macOS_Without_the_Good_Bits
Games have never been “trivial” to port to Mac, why do you think there are so few games that have been ported? Unless you write it for macOS, it’s just not easy or even worth it to port, has been since the Apple II days.
I meant the trivial portion would be porting back and forth between linux and early Mac OSX, making it a two-for-one proposition (though back then a lot of companies still chose not to do the linux port).
OSX was BSD based as well. Mac OS 9 and before were proprietary OSes. I don’t remember what the graphics underpinnings were, but I do know that porting directx to system 8.6 was a gargantuan task and the Mac ports were always 1-2 years behind pc.
Really just repackaged Proton, with some ridiculous install requirements including fucking Homebrew.
It’s not even Alpha level software right now. But, just to argue their side: it is meant as a preview for game developers to package their games with right now, and not the general public.
I guess I don’t really like the idea of a large company using a tool like Homebrew, I feel at that point they should write/include their own package manager.
I might be sounding pedantic, so feel free to ignore me if you’re a Homebrew fan, but it just irks me that the package manager is installed via curl’ing a shell script from their github project, and that the entire repo itself is stored on Github.
Even Microsoft has winget; dunno why a company the size of Apple can’t just roll a proper, secure way to distribute packages.
Also, as far as other package managers go, there’s Macports.
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?
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
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.
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.
Will there be any new Macs really? Isnt everything just some iPhone/ipad with iOS soonish? I doubt macs have any relevance in the future - just like last time when there was no Steve Jobs around. I mean there arent really any apps even for their watch… So why bother? Maybe they can just usw some cloudgaming …Apple ppl love paying and subscriptions.
Not sure what you’re talking about, a whole lot of people use MacBooks, I don’t think their market share dropped significantly. Desktop Macs, sure maybe but I think even that won’t completely die out.
You got a desktop or MacBook? Macbook pro is pretty nice but i dont see a future for osx or desktop. And while i agree some real professionals might keep using it for another decade but the vast majority of Adobe professionals will be replaced by other tech like AI or nuke artists etc
I got a MacBook Pro M2. It’s a good piece of hardware, MacOS was kinda annoying at first since it’s my first MacBook but I got the hang of it and it’s basically a normal desktop environment to me right now and I can’t see that changing significantly in the near future, I don’t think AI is gonna move that fast as to completely eliminate the need for typical PC desktop environments.
I stopped using it over ten years ago and dont look back at crap like quarkxpress or the finder. Only contact with osx i have now is old people with macbooks that have troubles with user permissions and Safari. Desktop PC can strive but i doubt mac desktop or osx will be part of that.
Maybe. But who needs it? I say nobody. The poor Photoshop and illu guys are already getting replaced. There is no need for osx so there is no need for desktop Macs and macbooks will run IOS and be nothing but a superpowerd ipad. Innovation with Apple is zero - they the money to do a new chip but nobody devs anymore for the iwatch since the idea how Apple wants to make business is pretty dated.
Meta app on iwatch …lol. 90s are calling and they want Apple back in the grave i hear. Or maybe Bill Gates can help them AGAIN?
Millions of developers of numerous technologies use Macs. To say macs won’t have relevance in the future is clearly uninformed. As a gaming platform, sure, Macs leave plenty to be desired, but as development computers, they work extremely well, if overpriced.
They’re also the standard in some industries, inc. design and video production. At least where I’m at. Hate the OS with a passion but not having a mixed OS workplace sucks.
That is the past. I know Photoshop ppl are getting laid off everywhere and replaced by nuke,ai and so on.Does Apple even do new desktop Workstations? Is that coke can still a thing?
I don’t like this decision, since I know the lack of support for different platforms than Windows as someone playing on Linux. Valve invests into proton and thus game support on Steam Deck and ChromeOS, so I’d have thought they’d make sure CS runs on macOS too.
Big difference I see from Linux and Windows is that they are OS that can be installed on different devices. MacOS is not the case, and even trying to get Linux to be stable and reliable on Apple hardware after the move to their own CPUs is a project in itself with Asahi Linux.
So I can see the lack of interest with how MacOS is a very restrictive Mac hardware only type experience for most people with how getting a hackintosh working is rather involved.
I’d have thought the pain point would have been the processor architecture (ARM64) rather than operating system - MacOS still supports AMD64 using a compatibility layer but it would probably be quite a drawback to game performance.
Not really, unless the game code was written in X86-64 assembly language, does low-level VM allocation for some reason, or otherwise has special dependencies on Intel CPU-isms. With a few exceptions, C/C++/Objective-C code written for X86-64 can be easily recompiled for ARM64.
The PowerPC to X86 transition was much rougher, because of the byte order change + PPC allowing integer division by zero while X86 disallowed it.
What’s your experience here? I’m interested to hear about projects that you have done this for.
The source engine has code that’s over 20 years old. A monolithic project like a game engine, which is statically and dynamically linked with god knows how many libraries they don’t even have code for, let alone permission, to compile in a different architecture, is not gonna be an easy thing to do.
I’ve brought various apps, bundles, and frameworks from PowerPC to Intel to 64-bit to ARM ever since macOS 10.0 first launched. Usually the most difficult parts were:
During the PPC to Intel transition, converting code that expected all data to be big-endian over to handling little-endian data, and catching integer division by zero before sending such operations to the CPU
During the 64-bit transition, switching from all the APIs Apple removed over to newer APIs, if not already done, and converting all code that expected integers and pointers to be 32-bit over to 64-bit
During the ARM transition, converting code that abused variadic functions to code that used them properly, and converting all code that expected long doubles to be 128-bit over to 64-bit (I know some developers were burned by the VM page size change, but that didn’t affect anything I did)
But yeah, usually the most difficult part of the transition is managing the dependencies. Whenever Apple transitions CPU architectures, if your app depends on a closed-source third-party library or kernel extension made by developers that went out of business years ago, you’re more or less screwed unless you can find or build a replacement.
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.
And there’s nothing wrong with this. While I’d love to see companies develop games that run on all of the main three OSes, there is cost involved. And Valve determined that cost to be too high to worry with. This doesn’t mean Macs suck, it just means Macs are not a viable gaming platform for some companies and some games.
Imagine if we saw reason instead of simply adding ourselves to the “Macs suck” bandwagon. What a world that would be – with logic and reason and understanding. Nah, just pissing on things is better.
Valve has been using MoltenVK to run Dota2 on Mac1. I’m a bit worried that if Valve would cut the funding on MoltenVK2. Furthermore, CS:GO had been an example of a cross-platform example for multiple-player game. Valve’s games may still support Linux/SteamOS, but what if other developers only release their games as win-only in future?
I agree. It's a mistake for Valve to reduce platform support as it becomes a justification for dropping other platforms for other developers as well.
I know that MacOS is a bit of a pain to support right now with how steam and third party applications are treated, but it would be a bigger issue for Apple to drop support if Valve maintained a strong presence on the platform via steam. With the way things are now, Apple might rip the bandaid off and just remove the ability to have third party stores on their computers. This is already what they do with Iphones/Ipads
… it literally contains the Steamworks SDK: github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton which becomes pretty awkward to ship on your own storefront. You’d have to do a good bit of work to make Proton steam-free. No one is going to do that for 2% of the market. Just like arguing you could use Chromium and anyone who wants to make a browser can use it but realistically it creates an ecosystem around Google and for Proton, around Valve.
Don’t forget that the only reason Proton even exists is because they added a version of Steam Play to Linux Steam users.
One dev does it in his spare time. I use it to run games that aren't on Steam like Ubisoft and Blizzard stuff.
But yes, as a software company you'd probably have to pay someone to create and maintain a similar release for your own use - but that's part of being a software company.
macrumors.com
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