[HN Gopher] Valve says Counter-Strike 2 for macOS not happening,...
___________________________________________________________________
Valve says Counter-Strike 2 for macOS not happening, there aren't
enough players
Author : tosh
Score : 243 points
Date : 2023-10-10 12:37 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.macrumors.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.macrumors.com)
| gclawes wrote:
| How much of what was done with Proton for linux is transferrable
| to macOS?
| dathinab wrote:
| it's complicated
|
| for many (probably most) ideas and concepts you probably could
| apply them to macOs with just a few tweaks
|
| but code reuse will be much more tricky in multiple ways. 1st
| while both macOs and desktop Linux are unixy what proton has to
| interact with is much more OS specific for quite a bunch or
| parts; 2nd when proton devs run into some issue with linux OS
| services/tooling they can (and have) fix the problem upstream,
| they can't with macOs; 3rd you can do much more "unusual"
| things with linux, some of them might matter for proton
|
| most importantly proton for mac would be either way a non small
| money investment and that investment has to pay of in some form
|
| if you only look at game sails I would be surprised if is worth
| it for either mac or Linux
|
| I my opinion what Valve gains from proton is not earning more
| money through Linux game sales but a "safety net".
|
| Windows has shown that if they can they would (at least for non
| enterprise licenses) love to lock down Windows similar to iOS,
| e.g. allow only their app store and and not allow 3rd party
| stores on their store. While the last time they tried that it
| didn't work out and EU is pushing regulations to reduce how
| much such app stores can be locked down this is still a _sever_
| risk for Valve.
|
| So by making large parts of their library "good enough" usable
| on Linux they always have a way out by providing a in-between
| of a console and a open Linux desktop which people can run on
| their hardware or for which they provide hardware ... like the
| Steam Deck (which is a bit different focused as a handheld but
| Windows is also not locked down at this moment in time). As a
| bonus the know-how and code stack they are building allows them
| to fan out in more areas even if Windows never get's locked
| down. E.g. they could create an actual console os with a
| immutable locked Linux core but then use stuff like flatpack-
| like container technology to still allow using it like a fully
| free Linux desktop for most use-cases but due to it being
| locked down at the core they can promise copyright protection
| and anti-cheat similar to a console to investors and game
| (weather that is ethical good is another question unrelated to
| this argument.)
|
| So proton provides value in form of "potential" and "safety
| net".
|
| But proton for macOs doesn't have any of this benefits. More so
| then windows macOs is increasingly getting more locked down and
| you could call Apple "king of the walled garden business
| strategy".
|
| So for proton for macOS it has to be clearly profitable, which
| it doesn't seem to be.
|
| And while Apples seems to wanting to get back into gaming on
| desktop slowly, they also tend to have quite a strong
| preference for software being developed with their proprietary
| tools. So while it might seem a good idea for apple to
| cooperate with Valve short term, long term I would speculate
| they wouldn't even like something like proton, because that can
| diverge sells away from their app store and isn't under their
| control but (Steam being) a part of the "experience" people
| might start to value a lot.
| Moomoomoo309 wrote:
| The performance hit from Rosetta makes it tough, and Proton
| hasn't worked on MacOS since before the first public release
| (before that, it actually did). It's not worth the effort for a
| platform that routinely snubs the gaming sector.
| dathinab wrote:
| idk. about performance
|
| the list of steam games which even with a huge perf. hit
| would still run quite well on modern macs is quite long tbh.
|
| but I agree that it's not worth putting in the effort to make
| it work
| kcb wrote:
| The whole reason Proton came into existence is because of very
| efficient translation layers from DirectX to Vulkan, DXVK and
| VKD3D. WINE was compatible and performant before the Vulkan
| translation layers but lacked modern DirectX version support to
| make it viable for gaming.
|
| So without Vulkan support from Apple, Proton is not really
| transferrable at all.
| yobert wrote:
| I always struggle playing games on my Mac because they keep
| updating the OS to disallow third party tools to disable mouse
| smoothing. Mouse smoothing is the bane of my existence.
| Shank wrote:
| The Steelseries ExactMouse tool still works for me on the
| absolute latest version of macOS Sonoma, without updates. What
| tools are you using that keep breaking?
| richthekid wrote:
| [dead]
| joeman1000 wrote:
| This is stupid. There's been an explosion in the number of
| gaming-capable Macs since the M-series chips came out. It's
| remained largely untapped. The reason "there aren't enough
| players" is because there aren't enough people doing games for
| Mac! It used to be an issue of hardware and OS support, but it
| has now become an issue of (frankly) lazy/biased/unimaginative
| developers.
| mjoin wrote:
| totally agree, a missed opportunity
| [deleted]
| naikrovek wrote:
| of course there aren't enough players, you have barely ported any
| games to MacOS, at least on Apple silicon.
|
| I was excited to see how well Portal 2 performed on my Mac mini,
| only to discover that it isn't even playable on Apple silicon at
| all.
|
| color me annoyed. especially since (presumably) these games work
| on x64 hardware just fine (someone please verify this.)
| philistine wrote:
| I know Apple and Linux are two very different things, but this
| complete abandonment of macOS by Valve should be concerning to
| anyone who champions Valve for their support of Linux. It's a bad
| look for their commitment to Linux.
| INTPenis wrote:
| Valve never had a commitment to Linux beyond trying to break
| Microsoft's monopoly.
|
| Don't get any illusions that Valve loves Linux, or Linux users.
| They just hate being locked into a Microsoft ruled monopoly.
|
| And picking between MacOS and Linux as a platform to compete
| with Microsoft, it really is a no brainer that you'd pick Linux
| due to the freedom of development it offers.
| Schnitz wrote:
| Why? Mac and Linux are clearly not that related here, for
| example there isn't a Mac based handheld made by valve.
| raydev wrote:
| I don't see how that's the case. What reasons are you thinking
| they would abandon Linux after they've built the SteamDeck on
| it?
| Kiuhrly wrote:
| It's also not the first time they've ditched macOS and kept
| linux support: SteamVR dropped support for macOS back in 2020
| https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/250820/view/22162780...
| criddell wrote:
| Are those older online games even playable anymore?
|
| A few years ago I listened to a podcast[1] where they described
| playing Team Fortress 2 - spawn, get killed by a bot. Spawn, get
| killed by a bot.
|
| [1]: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/emh36dn
| dharmab wrote:
| ...yes? I don't know what that podcast is on about. These games
| are very popular and still updated. TF2 was n particular has
| been updated several times in the past few weeks
| (https://www.teamfortress.com/?tab=updates) and has a healthy
| player count (https://steamcharts.com/app/440).
| enragedcacti wrote:
| The situation has been fixed but it was a pretty big issue
| for multiple years and took a coordinated outcry from players
| to get Valve to properly address it: https://en.wikipedia.org
| /wiki/Team_Fortress_2#Bot_accounts_a...
| pjmlp wrote:
| There are enough engines with Metal support, including Unreal and
| Unity, regardless of what Valve thinks.
| red_trumpet wrote:
| What does this have to do with engines? AFAIK, Valve developed
| their own engine "Source 2". At the end the article contains
|
| > 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.
| pjmlp wrote:
| If you bothered to read what you posted, they don't want to
| support Metal natively like the other engines.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Valve isn't saying there is some technical problem with
| Metal that prevents game engines from using it, so how are
| other game engines supporting it relevant? Valve isn't
| supporting it because too few of their customers use Macs
| for it to be worth it to Valve. It may be worth it to other
| engine developers, or maybe those other engine developers
| are wasting their time/money, but in either case that has
| nothing to do with it not being worthwhile for Valve.
|
| Valve publishes the relevant statistic btw. They have less
| Mac customers than _Linux_. Mac users are fringe and just
| aren 't very relevant to Valve.
| pjmlp wrote:
| >...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.
|
| https://www.macgamerhq.com/opinion/macos-metal-games/
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Why are you quoting macrumors? Valve says they don't care
| to support macOS because very few gamers use it:
|
| > _Similarly, we will no longer support macOS. Combined,
| these represented less than one percent of active CS:GO
| players._
|
| https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/73EF-08A3-0935
| -63...
|
| The existence of other games/companies that do choose to
| support MacOS is irrelevant. Valve isn't those other
| companies, they're making their decision based on the
| statistics of their players, not because they think it's
| technically impossible for games to support Macs.
| pjmlp wrote:
| To show that Mac users don't need to care about Valve
| existence, plenty of others willing to target Metal and
| Apple customers.
| kcb wrote:
| And yet countless PC games built in those engines still don't
| ship with Mac support.
| BaculumMeumEst wrote:
| Apple insists on making everything difficult. No support of
| opengl or vulkan. You can use moltenVK, but you own the issues
| and bugs that arise from that layer, get fucked. No openXR on
| their upcoming headset either.
|
| The fun doesn't stop there in Apple Land if you're interested in
| hobbyist development, you get obnoxious code signing
| requirements, you can only deploy a few iOS app to the devices
| you paid for per week, and they only last a while before they
| cease working and you have to redeploy them.
|
| I'm glad Valve isn't wasting their time.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Counter-Strike is a free to play monetized game. It doesn't
| make sense for the pay-to-play audience that buys $1,000-2,000
| laptops and $830-1,300 phones.
|
| Steam generally supports macOS, Valve spends a lot of time on
| the platform so I think you're dead wrong there. The titles
| that thrive on it target its rich audience.
|
| What does Apple have? The rich users. End of story. However,
| among all media companies, Valve's captive audience may be the
| one large, growing group that spends more on software every
| year than Apple users do. So it's complicated. That audience
| will not buy skins.
| antiterra wrote:
| Who is not rich but is also regularly spending $20,000+ on
| skins? Reportedly someone offered 1.4 mil for a knife skin
| and was turned down.
|
| I think it's more that rich (and plenty of middle class)
| people are fine buying gaming rigs AND Apple computers.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I think the success of free-to-play games on iOS sort of
| undermines your position here.
| itishappy wrote:
| Macs aren't just for super serious professionals, they're
| also for their kids. That audience will buy skins.
| Vt71fcAqt7 wrote:
| >What does Apple have? The rich users. End of story.
|
| That isn't accurate in this case because the rich gamers have
| more expensive setups than a macbook/imac. If you are
| spending 100,000+ on a cs skin you also have a 4090 (ie. not
| macos). You are thinking in terms of 'pro' software and ios
| mobile games.
| wnevets wrote:
| > What does Apple have? The rich users. End of story.
|
| I didn't realize there were so many rich people. Why do I
| keep hearing stories about an ailing economy?
| astrange wrote:
| When you ask people about the "economy" they repeat
| whatever they heard in the media about the "economy"
| because they don't want to sound out of touch.
|
| This is why the answers on all the economic surveys are
| that the responder is personally doing fine but thinks
| everyone else is doing badly.
| Unfrozen0688 wrote:
| What? The only monetization is skins. You also need to pay
| for the premier matchmaking. CSGO and CS2 is top of the Steam
| charts with about 1mil active players, not because its free,
| but because it is a great game.
|
| Valorant is there, but CS is practically its own genre.
|
| In CoD, Destiny, and CS you all shoot guns, but the
| difference is stark between them.
|
| For competitive gameplay, and gameplay feel, CS wins.
|
| You saying Macu users are too rich for the game? Have you
| SEEN skin prices in CS2?
|
| Do you even play?
| hhh wrote:
| Saying Valorant is 'there' is dismissive. I would argue a
| lot of the changes in CS2 were made to stay relevant to
| Valorant competitively.
|
| CS2 doesn't feel remotely competitive in its current state
| on 64t. It's a huge problem that Valve thankfully are
| taking seriously and patching every few days. I am curious
| where they will go with the networking re: subtick.
|
| I wish Valve would talk more about their decisions to
| remove several settings and things like lefthand. It feels
| like it is intended to keep things more similar across
| clients (IMO more competitive and level), so they don't end
| up in the config-maxxing hell that is TF2.
| airstrike wrote:
| How much do you think a gaming rig costs? OG CS was famously
| cheap to run, but CS2 is not the same thing. Sure, you don't
| _NEED_ to pay $2k but I 'm sure players are paying as much as
| they possibly can to have the best gaming setup
| sam0x17 wrote:
| they should make it paid for $80 when on mac os :O
| junon wrote:
| The thing is, is that CS2 replaced CSGO (which at one point
| was pay-to-play, which means people were required to sink
| money into a title which is now completely upended), removed
| a _lot_ of content (whole game modes are missing and there 's
| no plan on adding them back into the new version; maps have
| been removed, and to an extent some of the customization has
| been removed), and removed Mac support, which was previously
| very much supported with CSGO.
|
| They've also changed the game mechanics when it comes to
| determining when gunshots "register", which has very much
| changed the dynamic of the game and has vastly raised the bar
| for casual players to win even a single round.
|
| Further, ranked matches are handled differently now. It used
| to be that even losses contributed to your initial rank after
| a couple of placement matches. Now, you must win 10 games
| before you get a rank. Since placement games (games you play
| before you get a rank) are more or less randomly matchmade,
| it means that less skilled players are going to be up against
| impossibly difficult opponents to the point that even a
| single win is impossible, thus you're trapped in this
| unranked loop and will never achieve meaningful matchmaking
| with people of your own skill level.
|
| Further, "Prime" status was originally a barrier for cheaters
| since you had to buy it, and it made it such that prime
| status players were only matchmade with other prime status
| players. Since cheaters run the risk of getting permanently
| banned, they'd have to buy Prime over and over again -
| something Valve betted would be a way to filter out a large
| percentage of cheaters. However, they started to grant Prime
| status to people who had leveled up enough, which removed the
| cost barrier. Since cheaters level up quickly, it's become
| sort of a moot mechanic now.
|
| And no, Steam won't refund Prime status purchases, which are
| around $15.
|
| Couple the matchmaking differences with the shot registration
| differences, the removed content, and the dropping of
| support, and you have what is essentially a completely unique
| game that Valve replaced CSGO with.
|
| People are rightfully very upset. Many people bought CSGO for
| e.g. MacOS support. Now that game has been removed from their
| libraries with little to no recourse. Steam said they're
| issuing refunds for a few select Mac users but I've yet to
| see anyone say they've been granted such a refund.
|
| It's a messy situation that Valve has handled in one of the
| worst ways possible, learning no lessons from the Overwatch 2
| debacle that did much the same thing (and was received
| equally as poorly) or from Ubisoft's repeated similar
| behavior.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Clearly someone at Valve saw the overwatch 2 fiasco and
| thought it looked like a fun idea.
| leetcrew wrote:
| valve should offer a refund to anyone who has predominantly
| played on macOS over the last year or two.
|
| other than that, I don't see any issue with what they've
| done here. maps get added and removed from the official
| pool all the time, you can still play them on 3P servers if
| enough other players are interested. and hit registration
| has been a constant complaint since approximately the
| beginning of time, hard to take that part seriously...
| junon wrote:
| > other than that, I don't see any issue with what
| they've done here.
|
| You don't see an issue paying for a game only to have it
| forcibly removed from your possession?
|
| > maps get added and removed from the official pool all
| the time
|
| This isn't the official pool (if you're talking about
| competitive pools), and no it doesn't happen all the
| time. Valve never removed a map from CSGO, only added
| them.
|
| > you can still play them on 3P servers if enough other
| players are interested.
|
| Oh right, community servers. I forgot about that, thanks
| for reminding me. Community servers are no longer listed
| publicly in a browser like they used to be. Now you have
| to google search for servers and connect to them directly
| via IP and port. They removed that functionality as well.
|
| > and hit registration has been a constant complaint
| since approximately the beginning of time
|
| Not really. The only time people complained about it
| prior to CS2 was when they made it server registration to
| combat cheaters, which introduced a lot of randomness
| depending on who you asked (nobody really knows how it
| works, but people could feel a difference at the time).
| Now they do sub-tick registration which is an
| approximation function that is being gamed by non-
| casuals.
|
| Here's a good video on the subject[0]. Ignore the bit
| about mouse DPI, dude had no idea what he was talking
| about with that.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eandoX7Jsh4
|
| They're trying to offer 128 tick-like gameplay without
| having to pay for the increased compute and network costs
| of doubling the current 64 tick servers by faking hit
| registration, which is having an adverse effect.
|
| So it's not merely some "git gud" complaint. It's a very
| valid complaint over a major change of game mechanics
| from a previously purchased titled that was effectively
| stolen away from you.
|
| You _should_ be upset by this. This is not how companies
| should behave.
| kcb wrote:
| Huh? Free 2 play dominates the app store on your $1300 phone.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| This is kind of a complicated story. I'm not really trying
| to talk about whether you're right or wrong. You're saying
| something objectively true, it just doesn't mean what you
| think it means, and it doesn't translate to the role that
| CS2 plays in Steam, or how the CS2 audience differs from
| the rest of the audience on Steam.
|
| On the one hand, the top of the app store is free to play
| experiences - apps like Spotify and Tinder, games like
| Monopoly Go.
|
| There are places where "nobody" (close to 0%) pay for
| Spotify subscriptions (representative of all
| subscriptions), like Japan, even though the iPhone is more
| popular there than anywhere else in Asia, comparable to the
| US, so there's some additional cultural elements to
| software spending that are a long story to tap into.
|
| And, in your life, you might know 1 person who (1) has
| spent money (2) in Genshin Impact, Hearthstone, or a
| Supercell title, and (3) is above the age of 25. There's
| something weirdly idiosyncratic about Roblox; and then,
| something about the off-brand-studios-you've-never-heard-of
| games. 11 year olds and Monopoly Go players, they are
| somehow bringing those titles to the top of the App Store.
|
| If iOS had a similar tiny marketshare relative to Android
| as macOS does relative to PCs, nobody would maintain free
| to play games for it. Those games are monetized by whales
| and advertising, including cross-promo, which are scale
| plays. There are no "small" free to play games.
|
| It's a totally different audience. iOS has _both_
| audiences, but the people who literally monetize in F2P are
| smaller in size than pay-to-players, even if they produce
| greater revenue overall. The _pay-to-players_ are the
| audience I am talking about, because I 'm trying to say
| that that's whose left in small platforms, and macOS has a
| lot more of them than whales.
|
| An illuminating example would be that the Epic Game Store
| has Fortnite. And yet. Who cares about the Epic Game Store?
| Epic has so many incentives - it practically buys all the
| sales of finished games up front, to give them away to its
| users for free. But that's actually kind of the opposite of
| what they should be doing for a healthy ecosystem.
|
| Fortnite monetizes free to play users better than anything
| else on EGS, so you can't make a huge F2P game on it. And
| by the way, Valve has CS2, DOTA 2 and Team Fortress 2, #1
| #2 and #8 on the charts that have only 2 other F2P games on
| it.
| PreachSoup wrote:
| > Steam generally supports macOS, Valve spends a lot of time
| on the platform so I think you're dead wrong there. The
| titles that thrive on it target its rich audience.
|
| Steam does run on Mac but the client and the game library are
| 2 different things. Not sure if you noticed the shrinking
| library and Apple's attitude towards the Mac games. They
| don't care about it. 0 support for 32bit games migration,
| unconventional api support (compare the usual d3d/vulkan
| land). Unlike ios, Mac does not have a hold on the game
| market
| willtemperley wrote:
| You're right they don't have a hold on the game market but
| they do care about gaming, just in an Apple kind of way -
| they want control of their stack, hence Metal as the only
| fully supported rendering engine. They're actively looking
| for developers to produce games or port them with the game
| porting toolkit.
| PreachSoup wrote:
| If their approach is to buy a few notable games
| occasionally like resident evil, not sure how long that
| would last. I actually would like Apple to just extend
| their support of IOS games to let them run seamless on
| Mac. There are both freemium and premium games on IOS.
| Just throw in some control api support and let the user
| install them on Mac. But Apple doesn't even bother with
| this low hanging fruit
| pyrale wrote:
| > Counter-Strike is a free to play monetized game. It doesn't
| make sense for the pay-to-play audience that buys
| $1,000-2,000 laptops and $830-1,300 phones.
|
| Assuming people who play f2p games don't have to pay their
| hardware too.
| geku3 wrote:
| It's de facto a pay to play game (you need to buy "Prime
| Status" to play main game mode since it went free to play),
| monetization is fair gameplay-wise, only cosmetics.
| diath wrote:
| I wouldn't say Apple products users are the rich audience, a
| rich person will just have a dedicated high-end Windows-based
| gaming PC.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| This is a misconception. Apple has something like 90% of
| the market share of all computer shipments above $1,000 in
| cost. Those shipments dwarf custom builds. Also, you can
| visit the Steam hardware survey, expensive ($1,000+) PC
| builds are quite rare, actually maybe only about 10% of the
| Steam audience, which neatly matches the expectations for
| who owns the premium end of the market.
|
| Not sure why I'm being downvoted. Anyone can easily verify
| what I'm saying by visiting the Steam hardware survey. I
| know that this does not match the expectations of HN
| readers!
| yobert wrote:
| I don't think people play counterstrike because they are
| cheap. A lot of my money goes to computers, and I still end
| up playing a lot of counterstrike. It's because it's fun.
| threatofrain wrote:
| That audience will buy skins, because that's how a lot of the
| winners in iOS gaming makes money.
| [deleted]
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| This does seem so backwards.
|
| Apple is known for the fancy screens, the retina screens, high
| end graphics.
|
| But then what, falls down in gaming?
|
| It seems like a no-brainer they should have the best ports of
| games, and people would see them and be "wow, that looks great,
| I'm going to buy an apple".
| fastball wrote:
| While Apple does indeed make things difficult, they're not
| actually the problem in this case.
|
| The reason mac users are complaining is because Valve released
| this as an update to CS:GO rather than a separate game.
|
| I don't think mac players would really care that much about CS2
| not being mac compatible if Valve hadn't done that. They
| would've shrugged and said "ok, I'll keep playing CS:GO then".
| But they can't do that, and that is 100% on Valve.
| mehlmao wrote:
| Valve could have handled it better, but you can still play
| CS:GO. Right click > Properties > Betas. I've used it to play
| a mod that hasn't been updated for CS2. There's very little
| playercount though.
| meltyness wrote:
| It's forward-looking! The 90% consumer will be able to afford
| the "Apple Vision Pro" by 2039 adjusted for inflation!
| ryandrake wrote:
| I've never seen an API get as much hate from big tech as OpenGL
| got over decades. It started with Microsoft trying to kill it,
| and now Apple. The proprietary alternatives are not really even
| that much better. Just vendor lock-in for the sake of vendor
| lock-in.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| It's fine to deprecate OpenGL. What is not fine is not
| supporting Vulkan.
| shopvaccer wrote:
| I think OpenGL is important as a simple, "universal" legacy
| standard. As long as it's supported (with reasonable
| performance), through something like Zink it's fine.
|
| As someone who is new to graphics programming, the
| pervasiveness of OpenGLES3/WebGL2 is really great. It's a
| single relatively-simple standard that is almost
| everywhere.
| astrange wrote:
| Desktop OpenGL isn't simple, it's hard to use and even
| harder to debug, and it doesn't have reasonable
| performance unless you know which APIs are mysteriously
| slow.
|
| WebGL is covering up a lot of stuff for you, but it's
| better to find/create a modern "simple" API on top of a
| modern rendering API if you want one.
| nicman23 wrote:
| have you looked at the vulkan scenegraph thing?
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Deprecate OpenGL i.e. let it be recreated on top of
| Vulkan in user code.
| diath wrote:
| Why? OpenGL works just fine and there are plenty of
| resources about OpenGL programming all over the internet,
| unless you're a triple A studio, you don't need what Vulkan
| has to offer, it will only slow down your development by
| adding needless complexity.
| snuxoll wrote:
| OpenGL doesn't necessarily vanish, it becomes a higher
| level abstraction instead of something graphics drivers
| must natively speak. I think we are all better off if
| graphics vendors stick with supporting primitives and let
| higher level tools be built on top.
| MegaDeKay wrote:
| It isn't just triple A studios moving to Vulkan. Emulator
| development, for one, is moving there too. RPCS3,
| Dolphin, etc all see big time benefits to moving to
| Vulkan.
|
| OpenGL drivers are well known for being buggy as well.
| For a very long time, AMD OpenGL drivers on Windows were
| terrible and saw little love given that DirectX on
| Windows is where most of their effort went. It seems that
| Vulkan drivers are more performant, less buggy, and
| treated more as a first class citizen across both Windows
| and Linux.
|
| And OFC, Apple deprecated OpenGL and they are stuck at
| 4.1 from 2011. At least with MoltenVK, you get
| Vulkan->Metal and a modern-day API to talk to without
| having to deal with Metal directly.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Dota 2 on linux has already stopped using OpenGL. Now Vulkan
| is the only option.
| arp242 wrote:
| I always thought this was an interesting story on the history
| of OpenGL and D3D:
| https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/88055/20932
|
| It's outside my field and before my time, but it seems more
| complex than "vendor lock-in for the sake of vendor lock-in".
| bitwize wrote:
| Nobody cares about 3D APIs anymore. If you're serious about
| publishing a game you use whatever API the vendor gives you,
| including all the idiosyncratic ones provided by console
| manufacturers (NONE of which use OpenGL or Vulkan). If you're
| serious about publishing a game in 2023 you will be using a
| commercial engine -- either your own (if you're big like Valve)
| or someone else's -- and that wraps and abstracts away the 3D
| API details.
|
| Besides which, Metal is a fantastic API, at least as capable as
| Vulkan and less cumbersome to use.
| scruple wrote:
| Dealing with code signing bullshit at work this week. I hate
| that we support Apple at this point. We have like 5-6 engineers
| who are even capable of doing this work across a massive
| organization. It's a total nightmare and I'm never surprised
| that game devs don't want to deal with the constant headache.
| wronglebowski wrote:
| 100% this, Apple wants complete control over the distribution
| and tooling used on their platforms. While it does provide
| advantages for their hardware development I think it just ties
| back to them wanting 30% of any application or gaming revenue.
| CharlesW wrote:
| I don't see the connection. If Apple unveils a Game Porting
| Toolkit with Vulkan support, that won't affect the 30%/15%
| App Store fee.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| PC games that could be ported to Mac and published on the
| App Store are less likely to do so since there's a lack of
| support from Apple's side. They care more about mobile
| games it seems.
| JimDabell wrote:
| > them wanting 30% of any application or gaming revenue.
|
| 15%. They only charge 30% to people making more than a
| million dollars a year through the App Store.
| dkasper wrote:
| So 30% for Valve
| Macha wrote:
| To be fair, 30% is what Valve as a distributor charges
| (glass houses and all that). Valve the game developer is
| a hobby project subsidised by Valve the distributor.
| JimDabell wrote:
| No, 0% for Valve because they publish through Steam not
| the Mac App Store.
| nostromo wrote:
| The answer is pretty simple: Apple doesn't care about gaming.
|
| This goes back to Steve Jobs who didn't like gaming and
| apparently saw it as a waste of time. John Carmack mentioned
| this from his time working with Jobs.
|
| Apple is now a leading gaming company -- not because they
| want to be, but because they're in a billion pockets and lots
| of those people enjoy gaming.
|
| The reason the tooling and developer experience sucks is
| because Apple doesn't have an advocate for gaming at the VP
| or C-suite level.
| karmakaze wrote:
| I used to wish for the day that macOS gaming could become a
| thing. Now I seem wiser or more understanding of larger issues.
| The mac desktop/os is great. It would be great if many games
| supported it natively.
|
| However for the game makers where's the payoff? It's been long
| enough of Apple by their actions making it _not_ a suitable
| platform as a gaming target. Even if it was today, there 's
| little reassurance that there won't be some tech/policy change
| that impacts the publishers and gamers in an undesired way.
|
| Today I use Apple hw/sw products in a commodity manner. Most
| apps/tools I use can or could easily be run elsewhere. I'm not
| interested in walling myself into anyone's garden.
| xaerowalk wrote:
| I have been using a MacBook Air for less than a year and I
| don't see the greatness. Screen is okay, touchpad is a bit
| better but a lot bigger than at my HP Elitebook, battery time
| was twice better but it was degraded faster than elitebook,
| it is 3 hours vs 5 now for the same regular devops tasks (it
| was 4/8).
|
| Mac OS... It is horrible. I can't actually describe this,
| maybe I'm just a linux binded user and gonna prefer Manjaro
| KDE forever.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Just like Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft either offer direct support of
| APIs very similar to PC ones, have first-party supported
| wrappers or otherwise have well supported tooling which
| supports the platform.
|
| Eg Microsoft's graphics API is also just a DX12 variant,
| Nintendo Switch supports Vulkan and OpenGL, and while I'm not
| informed about Sony's current systems, their APIs were
| previously fairly close to OpenGL/Vulkan in design. They all
| also put in a lot more effort to accommodate game developers
| than Apple's "my way or the highway" approach to everything.
|
| On top of all that, as dedicated gaming devices, they have
| momentum going for them which results in game dev tooling
| being ported because, well, they're devices meant primarily
| for gaming. They also all have many first party studios with
| very popular IPs. Apple has none of this going for it.
|
| Microsoft and Sony also happen to be bringing a lot of
| popular first party titles to Windows, so the console APIs
| are only more likely to drift towards the Windows & Linux
| standards. Even moreso with the consoles mostly just being
| regular PCs now.
| elabajaba wrote:
| Pretty much no one uses Vulkan on switch, and gl only gets
| used by small indies that aren't using a major engine and
| couldn't/wouldn't partner with a porting studio. NVN is
| just significantly faster than either of those (and the
| switch needs all the help it can get performance wise)
| mlinhares wrote:
| The difference is that these 3 companies already have a
| market, Apple doesn't even bother trying to convince people
| to get games on the platform, other than iOS. I don't think
| they care about gaming on macs at all.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Apple doesn 't even bother trying to convince people to
| get games on the platform..._
|
| Don't they?
| https://developer.apple.com/wwdc23/topics/graphics-games/
|
| > _...other than iOS._
|
| macOS on Apple Silicon supports iOS apps/games, so many
| "iOS" games work great on macOS.
| lawlessone wrote:
| That's great if you want to play phone games on your mac.
| CharlesW wrote:
| As well as games that work great on tablets, TVs, and
| HMDs as well, yes.
| Macha wrote:
| Honestly doubt your average touch optimised iPhone game
| works "great" on TVs.
| hulitu wrote:
| I bet candy crush looks great on a 27" retina display. /s
| refulgentis wrote:
| I've been deeply coupled to Apple since 2005 and it's
| safe to say they've made stabbing attempts at getting
| serious about this a dozen times, real serious ones too,
| but inevitably it doesn't matter.
|
| The most recent one that comes to mind is Mac x VR
| marketing push...4 years back? Ended it complete tears,
| SteamVR isn't even available for Mac anymore. And it was
| depressingly obvious at the time there was no reason for
| it to work out, it was clear ARM Macs were coming very
| soon.
| clhodapp wrote:
| The fact that they view a stabbing attempt as a step
| toward being serious seems like a big part of the issue.
| In order to have a successful platform, you need to be
| dedicated to the idea of being a platform and continue
| pouring in the resources whether it feels like it's
| aligned with this quarter's business themes or not.
| lawlessone wrote:
| It allows them avoid being compared to PC's . They don't
| have worry about someone saying the Mac sucks for playing
| game X... because nobody will even try.
|
| It bolsters their image that they're not just another PC.
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| You are just spreading FUD at this point, they do care,
| devs just don't want to bother, that's different
|
| https://developer.apple.com/games/
| millzlane wrote:
| I just checked out their forum and I can only wonder why.
| There seem to be multiple cries for help from devs with
| no comments.
| Spivak wrote:
| Have you checked the developer forums for _any_ product
| made by a large company? I promise you they 're they
| exact same.
|
| There are plenty of reasons to not support macOS for your
| game, but this one isn't it.
| millzlane wrote:
| I just meant, that if the process to get help isn't
| helpful. A lot of new comers won't try.
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| Making games is already difficult, nobody wants to do
| extra mile to support a platform, Valve made the right
| choice with proton, unfortunately, that means less
| incentives to have a native gaming experience on Linux..
| I'd say the tradeoff is worth it
|
| Apple should do something similar, but they'll never do
| since their users expect quality over anything else, wich
| is why they market Game Porting Toolkit as a testing
| platform, as opposed to a shipping platform for Valve's
| Proton, even thought it's basically the same project, 2
| different culture, Valve doesn't care if the experience
| is worse
| Angostura wrote:
| > Apple doesn't even bother trying to convince people to
| get games on the platform
|
| Presumably why Sonoma introduced a 'gaming mode' for the
| first time.
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT213658
| willtemperley wrote:
| This is also probably why they have built a suite of
| tools to encourage game developers to the platform:
|
| https://developer.apple.com/games/
| api wrote:
| Apple does seem pretty determined to keep games off their
| platform.
|
| PSA for all OS vendors: _nobody is going to write software for
| your walled garden anymore_. Nobody. The more you try to force
| this, the more you will simply repel developers from your
| platform.
|
| The OS graphics/app API wars are over and everyone lost. For
| GUI people are going to use Electron, Tauri, or maybe Qt. For
| games they're going to use OpenGL or Vulkan.
|
| Even big companies are avoiding native development. What do
| Slack and Discord use? Electron.
| astrange wrote:
| You sound like a web developer, but that's not how games
| work. Console games are all developed for proprietary
| graphics APIs; if you're not touching one, it's because
| you're using someone else's engine.
|
| More importantly, Vulkan is low level and has to be written
| for a specific GPU brand for best results, so your code using
| the same API would not behave the same way.
| afavour wrote:
| They're probably right but it does feel like a negative feedback
| loop. I used to have an Intel MacBook, during COVID I had a blast
| playing COD: Warzone with friends while in isolation. But then I
| got an M1 Mac and that door closed. If it were possible to play
| I'd probably still do it from time to time.
|
| That said, I probably wouldn't be spending enough on battle
| passes/whatever to make it worth their time. To be cynical, I
| wonder if it's less the total number of Mac players and more the
| _amount of money earned_ from those players. Stands to reason
| anyone that didn 't buy a specialized gaming rig is going to be
| more of a casual player.
| Klonoar wrote:
| Did that game just... not work with Rosetta?
| afavour wrote:
| It requires Boot Camp.
| chuckwnelson wrote:
| You may be interested in Wineskin for M1/M2 Macs. I use this to
| play some old school games on my 2023 M2 Max Mac.
| https://github.com/Gcenx/WineskinServer
| gattilorenz wrote:
| Or the recent Game Porting Tookit, supporting DX12:
| https://www.applegamingwiki.com/wiki/Game_Porting_Toolkit
|
| Quite a few modern games are supported: https://www.applegami
| ngwiki.com/wiki/Game_Porting_Toolkit#Ga...
| a1o wrote:
| That is still wine
| gattilorenz wrote:
| It's CrossOver, so Wine, but the support for DX12 (and
| the Metal support) is by Apple and afaik not merged back
| in wine.
| afavour wrote:
| Looks cool but unfortunately the only games I'd be really
| interested to play are the more modern ones my friends are
| playing, my understanding is the copy protection etc always
| gets tripped up by Wine.
| Razengan wrote:
| Well it can't be the total number of Mac users, which is higher
| than the population of some countries. Maybe it's just that there
| aren't many Mac gamers who want to play Counter-Strike, just like
| there wouldn't be many Xbox owners who want to play Mario, even
| if it was available for Xbox.
| bakugo wrote:
| No point in releasing and maintaining games for a platform that
| is actively hostile towards them. Even disregarding the whole
| Vulkan/Metal situation, Apple's complete disregard for backwards
| compatibility means any game that does get ported will probably
| just stop working in a year or two if it's not updated, so why
| bother?
| pjmlp wrote:
| Just like a games console, they should be used to it.
| Macha wrote:
| Consoles give 6-8 years of guaranteed compatibility for a
| single console life cycle, and often extend that
| compatibility for another 6-8 years for the next version of
| the console. Is there any game that does not run on the
| console hardware that was current at the time the game was
| shipped that now doesn't because of OS updates?
| pjmlp wrote:
| What compatibility?
|
| Some consoles did ship an emulator for the previous
| generation, and they don't support all titles.
| Macha wrote:
| For examples of cross gen compatibility, the Xbox Series
| console is compatible with approximately all Xbox One
| titles, the PS5 is compatible with approximately all PS4
| titles, the 3DS was backwards compatible with basically
| all DS titles.
|
| Really the notable breaks of late have been PS3 to PS4,
| and WiiU/3DS to Switch.
|
| For examples of continued compatibility within a
| generation... every console ever? I think there were a
| handful of PS2 titles that had graphical bugs on the slim
| PS2? But that's going back over 20 years.
| pjmlp wrote:
| By definition approximately is not all.
| etchalon wrote:
| I'm not sure why this is generating such debate.
|
| CS:GO is a competitive shooter. Macs are not widely popular with
| that type of customer.
|
| It has nothing to do with the technical limitations or business
| decisions of Apple (especially since Valve would distribute via
| Steam, where Apple's cut wouldn't factor into it).
|
| If they ever ship to iOS, they'll have to support Metal, and once
| they have to support Metal, they'll get Mac support essentially
| for free. That will change the calculation on whether Macs are
| worth supporting for them.
| fastball wrote:
| Because instead of releasing CS2 as a separate thing, they
| released it as an update to CS:GO. So those 1% of CS:GO players
| that were happily playing on macs a few weeks ago are SOL now.
| fideloper wrote:
| IIRC playing counter strike on Mac was wonky anyway due to Mac's
| mouse acceleration, so I super rarely played CS even tho I had it
| installed and liked it.
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| using a mac is all about paying $15 for a program to change a
| setting that should have been a checkbox
| IshKebab wrote:
| You mean you don't want your scroll wheel to have better
| acceleration than a jet fighter?
| RockRobotRock wrote:
| Seriously. macOS software _looks_ beautiful but is all closed
| source and $10+
| robertoandred wrote:
| Only if you're scared of the terminal
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Funnily enough, you can _finally_ turn off mouse acceleration
| in macOS Sonoma without jumping through any weird hoops that
| may or may not work anymore. It 's a checkbox in the Mouse
| preferences pane now.
|
| If Apple really wants games to bother supporting their platform
| of questionable financial viability, they may need to learn a
| lesson that other platforms figured out a long time ago: you
| can pay a developer a bunch of money and they'll make their
| game run on your system. I know that's a big ask for a small
| company with $166 billion of cash sitting around, so I don't
| expect it to happen.
|
| Sad to see Mac development shops bailing on the platform as it
| finally comes around to having useful GPUs in all of their
| computers. Blizzard used to have all their games cross platform
| up until Overwatch and now Diablo 4, but apparently it just
| wasn't worth doing anymore.
|
| I think it's just been decades of the Mac mostly sucking for
| gaming, people don't even think about buying games on it. If
| you want to play games you already own something that's better
| for that.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Why would Apple want that?
|
| Game devs already support their primary mobile platforms,
| that make them the most money. Macs are basically for work
| and low intensity recreation at this point. Gamers don't buy
| Macs, due to low customizability.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| And yet Apple is putting a bunch of work on the technology
| side to try and get more games on to the Mac. So _someone_
| at Apple has finally decided it matters a bit and they
| could go after this.
|
| https://developer.apple.com/games/
|
| https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/10123/
|
| Where I expect them to fall short is on convincing major
| games that Mac support actually worth doing, regardless of
| what tools Apple can provide for it.
|
| They're at the point of waving around a handful of games
| (Death Stranding, No Man's Sky, Resident Evil Village) and
| having Hideo Kojima on stage at WWDC. But I don't think
| releasing new dev tools on its own is going to take them
| from here to Counter-Strike 2 and Diablo 4 making their way
| back to Mac support.
| opdahl wrote:
| Where exactly do I go to turn off mouse acceleration?
| wlesieutre wrote:
| System Settings -> Mouse and hit the "Advanced..." button
| at the bottom
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| This helped me out: https://linearmouse.app/
| minimaxir wrote:
| Logitech's gaming mice are Mac-supported have a zero mouse-
| acceleration sensor and they do work well. (although the G Hub
| software is controversial)
| msp26 wrote:
| I hate that I have to use this boated app for the sole
| purpose of changing my DPI. It's obnoxious.
| thefz wrote:
| The current situation of gaming with Apple computers makes
| complete sense. Most of the people dedicated to playing games on
| their computer will at least want to upgrade the occasional part
| from time to time to keep up, which is impossible when everything
| is soldered together.
|
| It simply has never been a decent platform for games, bar some
| mobile ports, due to its closeness.
| baby wrote:
| Lots (most?) of gamers don't upgrade their gaming PC, they just
| buy a preassembled one and will just buy a new PC when the time
| comes.
| thefz wrote:
| Anecdotal, but of all the enthusiasts I know, zero have a
| prebuilt PC (outside of a laptop or SFF).
| asmor wrote:
| That's a weird argument. The M1 is quite capable and can keep
| or or even outperform many current gaming value builds. And
| eSports titles generally do not change their minimum
| requirements too much to keep their entire audience engaged and
| FPS high. Not to speak of Intel rarely to never reusing the
| same socket anymore and the switch to AM5/DDR5 specifically
| making incremental updates unavailable to most people.
| thefz wrote:
| Still, mobo/RAM/CPU is a possible partial upgrade while with
| the M1 you replace the whole computer.
|
| And at the same price point I highly doubt an M1 can
| outperform any current build above 1080p, with high refresh
| rates and VRR.
|
| And even if it was... Who cares if there are no games for it?
| Zetobal wrote:
| Intel and AMD have multi generation sockets both newest
| generations can run on ddr4/5 and for most the bottleneck is
| still their GPU... stop inventing.
| asmor wrote:
| Intel has Sockets for _one_ tick /tock generation. AMD is
| much better there, but especially right now AM4 is not
| exactly futureproof and AM5 is still quite expensive.
|
| And which component bottlenecks is always relative to your
| resolution.
| ansible wrote:
| > _The M1 is quite capable and can keep or or even outperform
| many current gaming value builds._
|
| At the same price? I would be surprised if that is the case.
| You can get a used M1 Mac Mini for around $300 on eBay. For
| that money, you can get a used i5 business desktop and a new
| low-profile RX 6400 for about that. At that price point,
| you'll see much better visuals and framerate for most games
| on the Windows PC (or you could run Linux). The PC owner can
| then later buy a better desktop system and put the same GPU
| in it. And later still the PC user can upgrade the GPU.
|
| With the M1 Mini, that's basically it, and if you want to
| upgrade anything, you are buying a completely different
| system.
| Macha wrote:
| I've generally been quite negative on Mac's prospect
| throughout this thread, but even I would expect a M1 mini
| to wipe the floor with an 8th gen i5 (or whatever
| businesses are currently retiring) and RX 6400 for the
| games that are supported.
| kcb wrote:
| Why would you think that? The CPU is likely to be a non-
| issue for lower end gaming and the RX 6400 has
| significantly better theoretical performance and memory
| bandwidth.
| ansible wrote:
| I haven't found an exact comparison, but here is what I
| found in a quick search.
|
| M1, Unigine Heaven, 1080p, _Medium_ settings, 56 fps
| average:
|
| https://youtu.be/DzIrmSFqzYk&t=271
|
| Ryzen 5, RX 6400, Unigine Heaven, 1080, _Ultra_ settings,
| 46 fps average:
|
| https://www.alktech.co/articles/asus-dual-radeon-
| rx-6400-4gb...
|
| At least for the RX 6400 test, the bottleneck is the GPU
| itself.
| asmor wrote:
| Let me just reframe the argument.
|
| - People shouldn't buy Apple hardware for the games, but
| there's clearly an audience of Apple users (that have
| these devices for _other_ reasons) for a lot of games, so
| supporting it should be an easy win. Source 2 already had
| a Metal build (via Dota 2). Valve cut away a confirmed
| audience larger than Steam Deck owners.
|
| - Don't get hung up on "the M1". Apple's higher end
| models scale quite well, the Pro is very common and the
| Max, while mostly a bad investment solely for games,
| would scale well if there were games to run on it.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| > should be an easy win
|
| That presumes that Mac users are even interested in
| playing games... in any large enough numbers.
| MegaDeKay wrote:
| Besides the other responses to your comment, many gamers are
| probably playing other games besides eSports titles - they'll
| also want to play more demanding games as well. Not many are
| going to buy a platform they can't upgrade the bits and
| pieces in.
| bluSCALE4 wrote:
| This seems like a mistake if CS2 can run on stock M1's.
| Razengan wrote:
| It's not like Valve ever tried their best on Mac:
|
| * Even years after the introduction of Apple Silicon, the Steam
| STILL only has a legacy Intel version which requires Rosetta.
| Despite being little more than a glorified web view, apparently
| they can't even bother to compile it for the newer CPUs.
|
| * They outright LIE about macOS compatibility: The store pages of
| some games show a big warning banner about being 32-bit-only and
| unable to run on Catalina+, BUT THEY RUN FINE!
|
| So Valve is not only not trying, they seem to be actually
| _sabotaging_ Mac gaming. It 's a good thing I started switching
| to GoG even back when I was still on Windows, and making most of
| my purchases there than on Steam with its additional DRM bloat.
|
| As for the hardware, even my previous fan-less MacBook Air M2
| with just 8 GB RAM ran games like Baldur's Gate 3 at a playable
| framerate, and my current M2 Max just blazes through everything
| (that's available).
| Eumenes wrote:
| As a gamer, I'd never invest in a Mac ... you can get 2-3x the PC
| for the same price, and you can upgrade it for 5-10 years. I
| don't want to buy a new $2k Mac every 5-10 years to keep up with
| game requirements. I'll use a Mac when my employer buys me a
| $2.5k MBP though.
| rjst01 wrote:
| Tangentially related - I recently made a fun discovery. Many
| older Steam games on mac are marked as 64-bit incompatible, but
| it turns out this is just a backend flag that's not always set
| correctly. Steam will let you install the game in spite of the
| warning, and if it does actually contain 64-bit code, it'll run
| just fine.
|
| The days of this being relevant are probably numbered though,
| because at some point we will lose Rosetta. But I'm going to
| enjoy Antichamber [1] on my mac while I can.
|
| 1: https://store.steampowered.com/app/219890/Antichamber/
| RockRobotRock wrote:
| Numerous source games that you could play on Mac before 64 bit
| was mandatory. Why can't Valve just update the binaries??
| xsmasher wrote:
| They're old codebases that may use libraries that are 32-bit
| only for things like sound, video playback, etc.
| IntelMiner wrote:
| Source 1 is extremely old (branching off from the "GoldSrc"
| engine that Half-Life 1 used which came from _Quake 2_ )
|
| Valve seems to be making a pretty strong effort to distance
| itself from working with that engine where possible (though
| it's unclear if their lagging tentpole title Team Fortress 2
| will get the Source 2 treatment)
|
| It's possible that rebuilding these games for 64-bit Macs
| specifically would encounter an undesirable amount of bugs
| [deleted]
| swsieber wrote:
| Huge shout out for Antichamber. It had a wonderfully mind
| bending learning curve.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| What about running it under the Game Porting Toolkit ???.
| 8b16380d wrote:
| [flagged]
| groovybits wrote:
| Gaming is also the highest-grossing entertainment industry, by
| a large margin - worth both the music and movie industries
| combined.
| mrstone wrote:
| Excellent contribution. A truly well thought out, concise brief
| answer. Bravo.
| tziki wrote:
| I honestly find it absurd that we have a perfectly good solution
| for gaming in the form of online streaming services like geforce
| now, but they somehow just haven't gained much adoption. Games
| not being available for a platform should be a thing of the past
| already.
| vermilingua wrote:
| You mustn't play CS if you think cloud gaming services are
| anywhere near suitable for this game. Milliseconds matter, and
| streaming your game sets a hard cap on how quickly you can
| respond; a cap much much higher than most players will
| tolerate.
| hojjat12000 wrote:
| Imagine playing CS on an streaming service! People are chasing
| more FPS and better hardware to see their opponent a
| millisecond sooner, talking about tick and subtick impact on
| the game.
|
| Playing single player games on a streaming service is fine, but
| competitive games? I don't think that's gonna get too much
| traction.
| leetharris wrote:
| I can empathize with giving up a platform that has little ROI. As
| a Mac-only computer gamer (after 30+years of PC gaming) it still
| makes me sad to see it abandoned.
|
| I can say that the game seems to run fine on Crossover. GeForce
| Now is also a great option if you're on Ethernet on great
| Internet.
| rjst01 wrote:
| I don't think the situation is as bad as it's made out to be.
| Yeah, you're not gonna get the latest triple-A looter shooter
| 3000. I've never enjoyed those. It may be a small minority, but
| enough games still get native ports that when I'm travelling
| with only my mac I'm never short of things to play.
| nicolaslem wrote:
| > GeForce Now is also a great option if you're on Ethernet on
| great Internet.
|
| It's a competitive shooter, the kind of game people play at the
| lowest settings to reach 400 fps. I doubt many CS players will
| tolerate the added latency of streaming.
| RockRobotRock wrote:
| The way the camera works in FPS really strains the
| compression. It works way better for games with a top down
| camera. let me know if i'm wrong, this has just been my
| hunch.
| dagmx wrote:
| Anything with low variability frame to frame will do better
| with compression.
| gehwartzen wrote:
| Not enough games on mac > So nobody buys macs to games > So no
| players on Mac > So games not made for mac
|
| Sad little loop :(
| Avamander wrote:
| All Apple's fault with forcing Metal on people.
| ncr100 wrote:
| /s they should just use directX
| kevingadd wrote:
| Or they could actually properly support and maintain OpenGL
| (or OpenGL ES, even). Or they could offer Vulkan. They
| don't even need to be native implementations, they could be
| Metal wrappers maintained by Apple. It doesn't take much.
|
| On Windows you've been able to use OpenGL if you want,
| literally forever, because there was always a baseline
| version of it available with the OS (and then if you
| installed video drivers, you got a GOOD version of OpenGL.)
| Now you have the option of native Vulkan if you have
| drivers too. All of this is maintained collaboratively by
| Microsoft and the GPU vendors' driver teams. You don't even
| need a GPU, Windows has shipped software rasterizers for
| Direct3D literally forever as well (and the modern software
| rasterizer, WARP, is actually quite fast)
|
| And on Linux you can either use OpenGL (natively), Vulkan
| (natively), or Direct3D (via Proton), and all three perform
| great and are reliable, maintained collaboratively by the
| Linux community and GPU vendors' driver teams.
|
| Meanwhile on Mac your option is to write your own custom
| Metal backend, or hope that an emulation layer you get from
| a third party like MoltenVK will work good enough for your
| purposes and won't break when your end users install an OS
| X update, since Apple is happy to break backwards
| compatibility for any reason any time they want. If the
| build of MoltenVK your app ships with breaks you need to
| integrate a new version and ship updates to everyone.
| ubertaco wrote:
| DirectX was also crappy vendor lock-in, but let's not
| pretend that the similarities go beyond that.
|
| DirectX was vendor lock-in _from the vendor that owned
| 80-to-90-percent of the market_. Yeah, it sucked to be tied
| to their platform, but at least you were tied to the
| platform that nearly your entire target audience was
| already using.
|
| Metal is vendor lock-in from a vendor that owns like, what,
| _maybe_ 10% of the market if we're being generous? And that
| 10% of the market is a group that largely is already
| disinclined to care about video games, so you're already
| unlikely to capture a noticeable portion of that already-
| small minority market segment.
|
| It's a dumb move, really. Compare that with how Linux has
| started getting support for games: WINE and Proton are
| compatibility layers so that you as a developer can still
| target that 80-to-90-percent of the market and your game
| will (probably) work on the 1% that run Linux too without
| you needing to do extra work -- and Vulkan (and OpenGL
| before it) are ways of targeting _everything_...except of
| course Apple, but that's only because they tend to take an
| IE6 approach to implementing standards (that is: either
| everyone accepts our crap as a de-facto standard, or else
| we don't implement any standards).
| jwells89 wrote:
| 10% of the desktop market maybe, for mobile games Metal
| usage is much much higher. Practically every 3D game on
| iOS is using it now.
|
| This is also probably why Apple is holding out. They see
| their phone/tablet iGPUs getting powerful enough to be in
| a league similar to those in their laptops and believe
| that mobile and desktop gaming will eventually converge.
| Game publishers might not care about the tiny share of
| Mac gamers, but will they also feel that way about the
| far more numerous iOS gamers?
|
| There's been hints of this happening with some games
| straddling the line between desktop and mobile like
| Genshin Impact which is often compared to Breath of the
| Wild and now the upcoming RE4 remaster will run on iOS in
| addition to the other major gaming platforms.
| ubertaco wrote:
| Mobile gaming and desktop gaming are roughly as similar
| as Java and JavaScript, or to use another comparison, as
| similar as spray bottle and a fire engine.
| jwells89 wrote:
| This is true for many games, probably even most available
| on iOS and Android today, but there isn't really a reason
| it _has_ to be true. iOS has native support for great USB
| /BT controllers (Dual(Shock|Sense), Xbox, Switch, etc) so
| as long as there's adequate computing power there's no
| reason why it shouldn't be capable of the same games one
| might play on a Deck, PS5, PC tower, etc, especially on
| iPad or Apple TV where the screen being used is larger.
| baby wrote:
| I think there's some fundamental issues with gaming on Mac
| also. I've tried gaming on mac for a very long time, and games
| were always sluggish and fullscreen seldom worked correctly.
| salil999 wrote:
| Apple wasn't also the most helpful when it came to motivating
| developers to port their games over. 30% fee for apps and no
| native development until 2014 with Metal. Windows had DirectX
| for a much longer time.
| foobarian wrote:
| Wasn't Jobs famously opposed to video games? Current state of
| things is not really surprising at all in that light.
| plussed_reader wrote:
| I believe it was the shovelware that plagued the Atari's
| and other contemporary setups that was the distaste
| overall.
|
| That ET(1982) game is indicative of the money-grabs that
| were trying to be avoided.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > 30% fee for apps
|
| Which is exactly the same cut every other publisher takes.
| Valve, Origin, GOG, etc are all 30%.
| jhasse wrote:
| Only Apple charges an additional $100 per year though. I
| know that's nothing for big studios, but it scares very
| small indie devs away.
| resfirestar wrote:
| Steam charges a one-time $100 fee per game, so it's still
| similar if upfront publishing costs are the issue. But
| certainly that $100 is less worth it if there are hardly
| any Mac players and thousands of Windows/Steam players.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| a hundred dollars. A year, thats 0.27 cents a day. The
| boomers tell me that's just 5 avacado toasts a year.
| Jensson wrote:
| Its quite a lot to pay just to make a gamejam game
| available though, and that is where indie developers
| starts out. If you can't publish your toys without paying
| 100 dollars then it is a huge issue for onboarding new
| developers who just want to test what it is like.
| prewett wrote:
| The $100/yr is to publish to the App Store, which I don't
| think is the place for a gamejam game. You can download
| Xcode for free and distribute the resulting binaries for
| free.
| Timon3 wrote:
| You are technically correct, except that you have to jump
| through hoops to run an unsigned application
| (https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/open-a-mac-app-
| from...), which for the normal user is tantamount to not
| being able to run the game.
| kevingadd wrote:
| Not anymore thanks to signature requirements. You need to
| be a registered developer and notarize your binaries.
| latexr wrote:
| > 30% fee for apps
|
| That's only if you publish through the App Store. A developer
| who publishes on their own website doesn't pay any percentage
| fee, though they do pay 100$ a year for the developer account
| which allows to sign and notarise the app. A developer who
| publishes on Steam pays 30% to Valve.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Steam seems to be a far healthier ecosystem than the app
| store, though. You might actually be able to break through
| on steam whereas the Apple app store has a very ossified
| list of top games.
| latexr wrote:
| > Steam seems to be a far healthier ecosystem than the
| app store, though.
|
| Not the point. Also, it's not surprising that one of the
| biggest gaming platforms, catering exclusively to games,
| is doing better in games than a more general platform; it
| would be strange if it were the other way around. Also
| also, no one is defending the state of gaming on macOS,
| we're all aware it's bad.
| robertoandred wrote:
| No native development? Macs had OpenGL since the 90s before
| Metal came out.
| kevingadd wrote:
| Ancient, poorly-supported, low-performance OpenGL, yeah.
| Game devs loved it and that's why there were so many mac
| ports.
| babypuncher wrote:
| developers pay that same 30% fee to Steam on PC. But it's a
| moot point because you do not have to sell Mac apps on the
| App Store.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > 30% fee for apps
|
| You can just skip the app store, can't you?
| Angostura wrote:
| Yup - I just bought Baldurs Gate 3 for Mac on GoG
| easeout wrote:
| Yes, especially if you're Valve and you operate the
| preeminent game store.
| badwolf wrote:
| which also charges similarly.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| never mind
| qwytw wrote:
| Steam games don't have scary dialogs.
|
| Neither do apps distributed directly by third parties as
| long as they are signed etc. (you just need the $100/300
| per year apple dev. account for that).
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| You're confusing code signing (which only requires a
| developer account) with store publishing.
|
| I don't have a single store-installed app on my mac and I
| only get warnings (once) from 1-2 open source apps whose
| developers don't code-sign.
| hmry wrote:
| Also deprecating OpenGL and never supporting Vulkan doesn't
| send a "we want game developers" message.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Playstation is doing pretty well with proprietary APIs.
| [deleted]
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Playstation is a stable platform, where game devs get to
| squeeze every little bit of performance out of. It
| doesn't come out every year, with new features.
|
| It's very different than anything on a Mac or PC.
| papichulo2023 wrote:
| Wow, TIL. Now I am wondering why they dont just move to
| vulkan, even the switch does.
| dagmx wrote:
| Vulkan is probably the least used API across any games.
| Most switch games don't use it either.
|
| Honestly, this is the biggest division between gamers who
| obsess over API and people who develop gamers. API
| divergence is really not that big of a deal as long as
| you can do similar things.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Switch also has a proprietary API called NVN, Vulkan is
| more like a 2nd level API.
|
| Any game dev that wants the full hardware capabilities
| reaches out to NVN.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| Almost no game on the Switch used Vulkan, except for a
| few PC ports.
| beeboobaa wrote:
| Besides the fact that apple demands far too much money from
| developers to "access their platform" they have also failed
| to deliver cross platform tooling so you need some fiddly Mac
| machines to be able to even build for their platform. Then
| there's the fact they broke backwards compatibility by using
| their own obscure processors so that makes developing for
| them a non-starter for many shops.
|
| Sadly this is a problem of Apple's own making.
| jwells89 wrote:
| The thing here is if cross-platform tooling were available,
| it'd encourage the proliferation of "checkbox ports" which
| have barely been tested on actual Macs and never optimized
| for them, which one could argue is more damaging than not
| having ports at all.
| kevingadd wrote:
| As a game dev I'm OK with having to set up a mac to do
| initial testing of my port and make sure it works, but
| I'm not OK with having to do that again every time Apple
| makes breaking changes to their APIs and threatens to
| pull my game off the app store unless I port and rebuild.
| I don't have to do that on Windows or Linux (or on game
| consoles).
| xnickb wrote:
| The bigger problem I see here is the required shift of
| paradigm: once users/developers are allowed such things
| it's no longer "Apple devices own their users", it's a
| more traditional "Devices belong to their users" which
| comes with a whole new level of problems that Apple can't
| possibly deal with.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Those damn obscure _ARM_ processors. Nobody uses those!
| ubertaco wrote:
| I mean, nobody else uses Apple's _custom_ ARM-_ish_
| processor, no.
| kennywinker wrote:
| M1/M1 chips aren't arm-ish. they're 100% arm, plus some
| proprietary extras.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Didn't they deprecate OpenGL or something to that extent?
| kennywinker wrote:
| OpenGL isn't a part of the ARM instruction set. There are
| plenty of arm chips with no GPU (e.g. name any embedded
| arm processor).
| mminer237 wrote:
| I don't believe Valve currently targets any ARM systems
| with any of its games.
| giantrobot wrote:
| That's not the same as saying _ARM_ processors are
| obscure. You 've probably got at least a dozen of them in
| your house right now if not several on your person.
| coldpie wrote:
| This entire conversation is taking place in the context
| of desktop/laptop PC gaming, where ARM is definitely
| obscure.
| piyh wrote:
| I was playing CSGO on my m1 until a month ago
| kevingadd wrote:
| Apple uses custom processors with features that aren't
| available on other ARM chips, and they have a custom
| compiler as well.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| The issue is more likely the very different graphics
| implementation. There is a reason both major console
| platforms settled on the same hardware (AMD CPU & GPU).
| Sony's own teams crying out "stop with the fucking
| proprietary bullshit like cell". Now Sony even publishes
| its games on Windows! It's top selling MLB The Show ships
| on Xbox!
|
| The Apple GPU is actually more like the Cell idea that
| Sony had to give up on (and add a GPU) before the PS3
| shipped. It's not as slow as Cell, but it's different
| enough from a regular GPU that games optimized for one
| aren't that great on the other. I love my M1 Max and M2
| Max for Civ and Factorio, but I've got a windows gaming
| rig for playing the kind of games that need show stopping
| graphics, and a PS5 for convenience.
| giantrobot wrote:
| > The issue is more likely the very different graphics
| implementation.
|
| Metal and Vulkan are very conceptually similar. Most
| things you can write against Vulkan will work in Metal,
| only the API calls will differ. MoltenVK will even wrap
| Metal with Vulkan's API.
|
| But the OP isn't talking about graphics APIs, they're
| making the absurd claim that ARM CPUs are "obscure". It's
| so wrong it borders on asinine.
| astrange wrote:
| The M1's TBDR GPU is very different from an Nvidia-style
| GPU. The different API doesn't actually matter much, but
| for best performance you'd want to rewrite the renderer
| whether or not you used a different API.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > It's so wrong it borders on asinine.
|
| Only because you're complaining about their exact wording
| and ignoring context.
| fullstop wrote:
| I wonder if the Steam Deck has pushed Linux above Mac in terms
| of Steam userbase?
|
| I tried, unsuccessfully, to find stats on the matter.
|
| Edit: As Sayrus points out below you can click on the rows in
| the Steam Hardware Survey to show more information.
| kaffeeringe wrote:
| Yes: https://www.heise.de/news/Steam-Umfrage-Linux-ueberholt-
| MacO...
| bakugo wrote:
| https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/
|
| The answer is yes. Mac is currently at 1.43% while Linux is
| at 1.63% (43% of which is Steam Deck)
| Bishop_ wrote:
| Valve actually collects really good stats on stuff like this
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-
| Softw...
|
| Looks like linux barely beats out macos
| Sayrus wrote:
| Steam publishes stats on this[1]. You can expand "OS Version"
| to see the repartitions between MacOS, Linux and Windows and
| their respective versions.
|
| [1] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-
| Softw...
| fullstop wrote:
| I was there, but didn't know that I could click on OS
| Version. Thanks!
|
| I also wonder if Linux or Mac OS users are more or less
| likely to answer the surveys. Unless they've changed how it
| works, it is a pop up asking if you want to be recorded.
| franczesko wrote:
| 30% of extra cut for Apple? No, thanks.
| asdff wrote:
| Even if you did game on a mac in the intel days, you would get
| massive performance improvements dual booting into a windows
| partition, so that's what most people who were serious about it
| would do and that certainly doesn't help the numbers.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| macOS actually has a _ton_ of games that work very well on the
| new Apple Silicon chips.
|
| I've played:
|
| * Lots of Paradox games (Stellaris, E4, Hearts of Iron,
| Victoria)
|
| * Civilization 5/6
|
| * Factorio
|
| * League of Legends
|
| There are a ton of games that don't work on macOS, but it's
| incorrect to say that you can't play on macOS.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| I've been binging Rimworld :)
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| Rimworld is a great game, although I do get frustrated with
| how bad the AI is at various tasks like efficiently
| scheduling workers.
|
| I'm hoping a new expansion comes out soon!
| nickzelei wrote:
| This makes me sad.
|
| I occasionally get the itch to surf or kz and boot up CSGO on my
| M1 Mac to do so.
|
| It's just more convenient for me to do this on my laptop, rather
| than to slug over to my desk to use my windows desktop that I
| rarely boot up.
|
| I tried doing the same with CSS, but because it's 32bit, it is no
| longer supported on macOS.
|
| I'm assuming this is a similar feeling that Overwatch players
| went through when their game got replaced with something that
| they no longer enjoy.
|
| Obviously Valve ran the numbers and I'm clearly in the minority,
| but man this just doesn't feel good. There will be more Mac
| players if more games support it, so this feels like a step
| backwards and is a negative feedback loop (just like others in
| this thread are also saying.)
| lewisedc wrote:
| Just incase you didn't know, cs:go is still available and a lot
| of surf/kz servers are still active.
|
| If you want to know how to access cs:go you can check out this
| vid https://youtu.be/A8cWDxqOG2k?si=w4xdxmRntqKLtYg0
|
| It's really simple and I would have wrote the steps here but
| I'm not at my computer atm.
| MenhirMike wrote:
| The thing that makes this a bit more frustrating is that Apple
| actually kinda has a solution, the game porting toolkit
| (Essentially Wine/Proton for macOS). Except that they don't
| just make it a component of the system for end users, and don't
| allow developers to use it as a runtime layer in their app (so
| Developers can't go the proton route and actually ship a
| Windows binary running on top of the game porting toolkit). So
| it's reasonable to assume that the toolkit will go away in a
| few years as well.
|
| Oh well, at least it's not the first time that Mac gaming has
| shown to be a dead-end, but without BootCamp, it really feels
| final. Can't even count on half-baked, outdated ports from
| Aspyr anymore since they got bought by Embracer and are
| probably trapped in their financial struggles.
| Yeul wrote:
| Don't blame developers Apple clearly never gave a shit about
| supporting a gaming friendly ecosystem. It's their way or the
| highway.
| nickzelei wrote:
| Sure, it might be Apple - and maybe reading between the lines
| that is why Valve dropped the support. However, it reads (to
| me) as not enough people are playing the game on the mac so
| they are dropping support. To me that doesn't read as being
| too hard for them to support mac. If it was easier, maybe it
| wouldn't be a huge deal for Valve to continue supporting it,
| but that isn't clear to me.
|
| I'm not a game developer though and don't closely follow this
| stuff, I'm just a person who occasionally likes to play CS on
| my macbook and can no longer do so.
|
| Note: I am aware of Apple not generally being very supportive
| of games on their platform. It's always been that way.
| ynx wrote:
| Apple doesn't support Vulkan, obviously doesn't support
| DirectX, and barely supports OpenGL. Metal is a different
| beast, and the adapter layers are not adequate.
|
| It takes extra effort, and fairly deep and unique knowledge
| of rendering, shaders, and compilation to support Metal,
| and even engines which do (Unity, Unreal) face some amount
| of difficulty in doing so well.
|
| Apple's strategy of giving the middle finger to graphics
| APIs is patched over poorly by their partnership with
| Unity, and the fact that lower-end games can get away not
| needing a crazy amount of compatibility...but it's still on
| Apple to do better.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| There is a very good Vulcan - Metal compatibility layer.
| It hurts performance, and that sucks and is absolutely
| Apple's fault, but it does mean developers can port games
| to Mac without worrying about Metal.
| shpx wrote:
| Is it also Apple's fault that Steam takes 34 seconds to start
| up on my Mac with four 3.2 GHz cores?
| kevingadd wrote:
| It boots fast on Windows and Linux so probably?
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Or Valve cares about it as much as about Counter-Strike
| on Mac? There is no technical reason for it to be that
| slow.
| hexo wrote:
| yes
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Is this the same Apple whose new iPhone SOC has hardware ray
| tracing?
|
| Apple has a gaming strategy. iPhone makes developers too much
| money to ignore, and since adopting in-house silicon across
| all product lines their handhelds, tablets, laptops and
| desktops all use the same APIs and CPU/GPU cores.
|
| If you target iPhone, there is not much additional work to
| add a keyboard/mouse/gamepad UI to target the rest of their
| ecosystem.
|
| We've started seeing Console games get ported to iPhone,
| which I don't think anyone was expecting a couple of years
| ago.
|
| > Resident Evil Village on iOS Is Legit. I Forgot I Wasn't
| Playing on a Console
|
| https://www.cnet.com/tech/gaming/resident-evil-village-on-
| io...
| baby wrote:
| I'm sorry but mobile gaming is a whole different "gaming"
| world. It's often not the same playerbase.
| naikrovek wrote:
| > Is this the same Apple whose new iPhone SOC has hardware
| ray tracing?
|
| it's the same apple who said "please bring games to our
| system" followed immediately by "opengl is going away.
| also, fuck you."
| otikik wrote:
| That's not the gaming department, that's the gambling-but-
| with-extra-steps department.
| eindiran wrote:
| The skinnerbox whaling department; now with built-in
| hardware support!
| asdff wrote:
| It has ray tracing with touch screen controls for the
| masses to play a reskinned bejeweled with banner ads. It's
| not a real gaming platform. No keyboard and mouse support.
| No first party controller. They even took away 3d touch
| that would have helped a lot with the haptics of touch
| screen controls.
| lilyball wrote:
| > _No first party controller_
|
| Why does it matter if Apple makes their own controller?
| iOS/iPadOS supports other popular controllers and the
| Apple Store even sells multiple controllers (including
| the PS5 controller).
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Adding built in support for a user's existing
| controllers, (XBox, PlayStation or Nintendo) to iOS
| devices and Macs is another one of those things that
| debunks the "Apple doesn't care about gaming" conspiracy
| theory.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > It has ray tracing with touch screen controls
|
| Again, Apple uses the same GPU cores across all it's
| hardware platforms. It will have hardware ray tracing on
| handhelds, tablets, laptops, desktops as well as on their
| upconing AR/VR platform as the SOCs are updated.
| randomluck040 wrote:
| In case you mean the games on iPhone on the App Store, they
| generate revenue for Apple via in game transactions and not
| by game sales necessary. What people typically play on PCs
| are not the same games. Most of the games, as you can see
| with CS2, aren't even available on iOS or macOS which is a
| problem. Outside of that I think you can run the games for
| iPhone on Mac as well but even then optimisation is
| necessary.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > they generate revenue for Apple via in game
| transactions
|
| Once upon a time, there were many iOS games that you paid
| for up front with no micro-transactions at all, for
| instance, XCom was about $20 a decade ago.
|
| I have a feeling the console game ports will be pay up
| front, just like they are on a console.
| Clamchop wrote:
| I think Apple's angle on this either should be or already
| is synergies. Because of AI and their nascent push into
| AR/VR, it appears to me at least that promoting gaming is
| one worthwhile prong in the campaign.
|
| To keep investment in the platform strong, they stand to
| benefit from stabilizing and recovering from some of
| their NIH brain damage.
|
| Will the fixation on collecting their cut come to an end?
| Time will tell.
| eikenberry wrote:
| Play on your laptop using Steam's remote play, Moonlight or
| something similar. You run the games on that windows desktop
| you have stored out of the way (mine is headless as well) but
| play on your laptop where ever you want.
| xcv123 wrote:
| Install Crossover then run Steam in Crossover. Works with M1.
| coolspot wrote:
| Or use Arch BTW, I meant Ashani Linux + Steam
| 1propionyl wrote:
| For those who haven't seen, Crossover 23.5[0] has integrated
| (some of) Apple's Game Porting Tool Kit (GPTK), in particular
| D3DMetal.
|
| This only works on macOS Sonoma currently, unlike Whiskey[1], but
| it's a good sign for the future and support for Windows games not
| ending at D3D11.
|
| [0] https://www.codeweavers.com/about/news/press/20230927 [1]
| https://github.com/Whisky-App/Whisky
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| Interested in how they integrated the GPT - is it under a
| permissive license?
| cglong wrote:
| Isn't one of Whisky's system requirements that you're running
| Sonoma?
| tempodox wrote:
| Yep, Apple Silicon + macOS Sonoma.
| tombert wrote:
| DISCLAIMER: My knowledge of graphics doesn't extend past
| "hobbyist".
|
| There's an alternate universe where Apple opened up Metal to work
| across platforms and languages, and _that_ would be the successor
| to OpenGL. As it is right now, we 're in this complete mess like
| we were in the 90s, where there's this hodgepodge of stuff being
| written using OpenGL and DirectX and Vulkan.
|
| Maybe if I learned it better I would learn to love Vulkan, but
| with the little I've played with it, it is absolutely _dreadful_.
| Doing even a minimal amount of stuff with it requires hundreds of
| lines of arcane, hard-to-read code. I spent two days figuring out
| how to make a cube rotate, and then I was done. OpenGL wasn 't
| exactly "ergonomic", but it was substantially simpler to get
| something built with it than Vulkan.
|
| Metal, on the other hand, is a genuinely pleasant graphics API. I
| find it reasonably straightforward to do a lot of stuff, it's
| reasonably easy to intuit what the code is _trying_ to do, and at
| least in the things I 've played with, it performs just fine as
| well.
|
| If Apple had pushed for Metal to be the successor to OpenGL, I
| think the world would be a better place now.
| [deleted]
| dleslie wrote:
| Vulkan is sort of a post-API API. It seems to be designed
| specifically with high performance render pipelines in mind,
| and "end users" should interface with it through an
| intermediary layer.
|
| Ie, you might prefer bgfx[0], cinder[1] or openframeworks[2].
|
| 0: https://github.com/bkaradzic/bgfx
|
| 1: https://www.libcinder.org/
|
| 2: https://openframeworks.cc/
| tombert wrote:
| Yeah, I know, though for awhile on certain parts of the
| internet, whenever people asked for the best place to learn
| OpenGL, you'd inevitably get some comment like "OpenGL is
| deprecated, learn Vulkan", and I just wanted to strangle them
| and say "These are different things! It's like telling them
| to learn machine code instead of C".
|
| My most recent stuff has been playing with FNA, which more or
| less works across platforms and wasn't even terribly
| difficult to get working on Mac with F#.
|
| Still, a guy can dream about a world where Metal was the new
| standard.
| cmovq wrote:
| > "OpenGL is deprecated, learn Vulkan"
|
| Unfortunately this is partially true unless we get more
| OpenGL updates. OpenGL doesn't support hardware ray tracing
| and some other newer features that are only supported in
| Vulkan\D3D12.
| tombert wrote:
| That's been a frustration of mine as well; the OpenGL
| people kind of abandoned it in favor of Vulkan without a
| viable alternative.
|
| I guess the typical response is that people will use
| something like a game engine anyway, so I guess fair
| enough, but I want something lower level than a game
| engine without having to get a doctorate in graphics
| rendering just to draw a rotating cube.
| zamalek wrote:
| > viable alternative
|
| WGPU (which is not web only) papers over many of the
| fiddly bits of Vulkan. It is lower level than OpenGL, but
| not frustratingly so. Although I agree: OpenGL is still
| situated in an abstraction sweet spot, and could use some
| love/replacement.
| pixelpoet wrote:
| > If Apple had pushed for Metal to be the successor to OpenGL,
| I think the world would be a better place now.
|
| Yeah Apple are just fantastic stewards of open standards, as
| can be seen from the amazing job they did with OpenCL...
|
| Still so angry at Apple and Nvidia for that.
| tombert wrote:
| I mean, they've done a good chunk of contribution to open
| source; they're one of the biggest contributors to Cassandra,
| for example. I believe they also contribute a lot to the
| FreeBSD kernel.
|
| But I more or less agree; Apple kind of likes to "open shit
| up and then forget about it" a lot.
| tpush wrote:
| > I believe they also contribute a lot to the FreeBSD
| kernel.
|
| They do not.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Actually it was Khronos, AMD and Intel that messed up OpenCL,
| after Apple gave it to them.
| robertoandred wrote:
| lol you're angry at Apple? It was Nvidia that drove the
| industry to CUDA.
| pjmlp wrote:
| More like Khronos, AMD and Intel failed to deliver.
| vachina wrote:
| [flagged]
| Applejinx wrote:
| It's like the mirror image of a guy who came to a filmmaking
| subreddit asking whether the clearly gamer PC he was looking
| at, would be good at editing 4k/6k video.
|
| Answer was overwhelmingly, 'well, you COULD by doing thus and
| so, kinda, or just get an M1 Mac?'
|
| I'm thoroughly OK with people playing games made for PCs on
| PCs. Knock yourselves out. It's a big industry. I'm not in it.
| :)
|
| I remember, years ago, being quite envious of people playing
| Space Engineers (if I remember the name correctly). Years
| later, I never did get to play Space Engineers, so I did other
| stuff. Basically none of it was game stuff. I'm cool with that.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| I play the full Blizzard suite on my Mac. It's nice that some
| game makers support the platform.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| ... how exactly are you playing diablo 4? Blizzard did not
| ship osx support for it. Another in a long line of 'The
| Blizzard you loved is dead.'
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| The same way Steam Deck users do, with Wine based tools
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wcMwHh8XP0
| sleepybrett wrote:
| I've done this on my steamdeck as well, but knowing how
| shitty blizzards 'warden' is it seems like a risk.
|
| However that doesn't change my point, the op said:
|
| > I play the full Blizzard suite on my Mac. It's nice
| that some game makers support the platform.
|
| I'm simply pointing out that that blizzard is gone,
| diablo4 is not native on the mac.
| BakaRakuda wrote:
| Mac computers are more capable than they have been for a long
| time, if ever. All it takes is for a developer to have the will
| to make it work on Mac.
|
| Recent game releases for Mac include: - Lies of P - Baldurs
| Gate 3
|
| Soon - Resident Evil 4
|
| Slightly older release - Resident Evil Village
|
| Maybe Valve just can't hack it? They also flamed out on their
| VR support a few years back, only releasing a few betas before
| they gave up and cancelled the whole thing.
| lizardking wrote:
| This is a chicken and egg problem. I've been playing Baldur's
| Gate 3 on my M1 Macbook pro, it's been a fantastic experience.
| The only reason I keep my Qindows machine around at this point is
| for the occasional game session. I've talked to many mac users
| over the years who were gamers but were marooned on consoles. So
| many unique experiences on PC that either can't be found on
| console or are objectively worse without a mouse and keyboard.
| Seems like money on the table waiting to be picked up.
| justinclift wrote:
| Anyone know if Steam has ARM64 support?
|
| If so, then dual booting a mac into Linux for gaming purposes
| might be a workable option at some point.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| Steam doesn't even have a native x86_64-only Linux version,
| you still need x86 runtimes.
|
| Though it is possible to use FEX-EMU to run it on Linux on a
| Mac: https://youtu.be/_tG3kfgqPhc
| asmor wrote:
| Steam doesn't even have ARM64 support on Windows or macOS.
| And neither do most games.
| justinclift wrote:
| Damn. Oh well. :/
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| Obviously you're at least partially correct, but I don't think
| that is the full story.
|
| "Few users" also describes Linux, but Linux (gaming) usershare
| is growing and recently passed MacOS usershare (as measured by
| Steam).
|
| I would argue that Apple's indifferent (if not hostile)
| attitude towards gaming has driven away many game developers.
| latexr wrote:
| > but Linux (gaming) usershare is growing
|
| Because the games are there. In large part because Valve is
| making it happen.
|
| > Apple's indifferent (if not hostile) attitude towards
| gaming
|
| They've been touting the abilities of Apple Silicon for
| gaming on their events. Their platforms support modern gaming
| controllers with zero setup. They had Hideo Kojima (and
| others) at WWDC. There are _two_ separate sections on the App
| Stores just for games. They developed multiple technologies
| specifically for games: https://developer.apple.com/games/
|
| We can argue if Apple's gaming strategy is any good, but
| calling them indifferent or hostile to games does not align
| with reality.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| * on their mobile devices
|
| But having proprietary APIs on Macs isn't going to get
| other desktop games to Apple, when Macs aren't nearly as
| numerous as people would like to believe.
| latexr wrote:
| > on their mobile devices
|
| No, everything I mentioned is applicable to the Mac.
|
| > But having proprietary APIs on Macs isn't going to get
| other desktop games to Apple
|
| Neither was that the argument. The explicit point was
| that Apple is not indifferent or hostile to games, not
| that their gaming strategy is good.
| Goronmon wrote:
| At the end of the day, there is a path to switch from
| Windows to Linux for gaming (both playing and development)
| without requiring an investment in hardware. Switching to
| Apple for gaming effectively requires investing in new (at
| least to the user) hardware.
|
| That's a pretty huge difference, and things like the yearly
| fees (even if they aren't expensive in practice) only make
| the switch less attractive.
| latexr wrote:
| No one wants to have to switch platforms to do one
| specific thing, we'd all prefer for the things we want to
| be available in the platforms we want to use. If you like
| Windows, you're not going to switch to Linux for gaming.
| What the growing number of Linux games allows is for
| Linux people to _not have to switch_ to something else.
| In the same way, the people who want to play games on
| macOS are the same ones who already use the platform.
| asmor wrote:
| Linux adoption is 100% incidental to to Valve investing in
| their own platform, which happens to be built on Linux. It
| has little to do with the technical merit of the platform
| where games end up. BSD isn't one of the biggest gaming
| operating systems because it's so great for games, it's
| because Sony needed an OS more free than Linux for their
| console.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Microsoft invested into DirecX. Valve invested in Steam
| Deck.
|
| Apple told game devs on Macs to GTFO, and this is the
| result.
|
| Did anyone else expect any other outcome?
| qudat wrote:
| > Linux adoption is 100% incidental to to Valve investing
| in their own platform, which happens to be built on Linux.
|
| I'm not sure if you realized it but you are arguing the
| same point many others have been in this post. Apple is not
| investing in gaming, especially relative to their market
| cap compared to valve. Valve is making gaming on linux a
| reality because they are investing in it.
|
| Apple has the money, they don't have the motivation to make
| it happen, because they don't want to participate on an
| open platform. That would be counter-productive to their
| goals of a walled garden.
|
| If you buy into Apple, you cannot leave their walled garden
| and that's by design, with no plans on changing.
| jerf wrote:
| Linux is strategically important for Valve to maintain a
| credible alternative to Microsoft. Note they don't even have
| to necessarily ever "pull the trigger" to force Microsoft to
| make sure they don't lock them out, simply having the
| credible option to do so is sufficient to achieve their
| business goals.
|
| And having picked up a Steam Deck about a year ago now, going
| into it with the expectation that it would run maybe half my
| games and tending away from the AAA releases, I can say they
| have a _very_ credible option. Valve can run almost
| everything without Microsoft now. Pretty much everything I
| have runs on my Deck just fine, since I don 't do the
| multiplayer games that have aggressive anticheat on them. I
| almost don't even think about compatibility any more because
| it's just there, for what I do. This has spilled over to my
| Linux desktop, too; I switched it due to having my fill of
| Microsoft's belief they own my system, own my users, and can
| do whatever they like with them, and if that cut off all
| gaming it would have been fine with me, but in reality the
| spillover of Valve's efforts is that it works just fine.
|
| Apple has chosen to make themselves strategically unimportant
| to Valve by making it probably even more difficult to support
| them well than to just give up and submit to Microsoft
| entirely. They could have played this role but have chosen
| not to, because in their world, this is relatively minor
| compared to what they want out of their platform.
|
| So even if the user count is roughly the same, Valve is going
| to support Linux much more, and is pushing it harder.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Linux usershare grew because of the steamdeck.
| k12sosse wrote:
| Linux user share also grew because of the work Valve is
| putting in upstream to make gaming on Linux easier and more
| performant.
| qudat wrote:
| > Linux usershare grew because of the steamdeck.
|
| Couldn't Apple do the same? Why isn't it working? You don't
| realize it but you are proving the counter-argument many
| are making. Apple refuses to contribute to an open platform
| for gaming, so they have to rely on converting game
| developers to work within their walled garden.
|
| That strat will never win for PC gaming.
| cjdoc29 wrote:
| I certainly keep a latest-gen console around so that I can play
| cross-play enabled games with my PC buddies. I don't have the
| patience or space for another computer, so a console is the
| next best thing. I will never have the best graphics nor
| control over performance, but the trade-off is worth it.
| tapoxi wrote:
| I'm in this boat, for most games I use my PS5 because its got
| the big Sony AAA single-player exclusives. The Steam Deck is a
| perfect option for PC games that need a keyboard/mouse, like
| CS2, because you can plug it into any USB-C dock and use it as
| a desktop PC.
| eerikkivistik wrote:
| Regarding Baldur's Gate 3 on M1 Pro, can confirm, the
| performance is just amazing.
| MegaDeKay wrote:
| If there was enough money on the table waiting to be picked up,
| Valve would know that. They have incredibly fine-grained detail
| of their user base on Steam, and they have multiple economists
| on staff to guide their decisions. It isn't worth it to them,
| and it isn't on them to bust out of that chicken and egg
| problem. They fixed the problem they already had (fear of
| Microsoft screwing them) by putting their eggs into the Linux
| basket.
|
| https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/jobs?job_id=4
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| It would be very interesting to see how many players of Baldurs
| Gate 3 were/are on mac, it is one of the blockbuster games of the
| decade after all. It runs flawlessly and mostly on ultra settings
| on a M1 max. Instantly swiping between a browser and the
| fullscreen game without flickering is just as good as it gets,
| regarding gaming user experience.
| asmor wrote:
| Your stats would be off, because the macOS build took another 2
| months to move out of early access. I do play on my Mac now,
| but I also did on my Windows Handheld before due to
| availability.
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| CS2 looks and feels wildly outdated for 2023.
|
| I can't fathom who could be interested in it outside of peer
| pressure or nostalgia.
|
| I could barely finish one full round. Haven't touched CS in years
| but did enjoy 1.5 and 1.6 quite a bit back in the day.
|
| Just move on.
| asmor wrote:
| The surface level simplicity (and infinitely scalable learning
| curve) is part of the appeal. It's essentially the chess of
| video games.
| lbotos wrote:
| And what game have you moved on to?
|
| I picked up CS about 5 years ago and it's... still a great
| game?
|
| fast twitch team shooter where solid teamplay and good shots
| win.
|
| Valorant is too... gimmicky. I don't want magic, I want
| straight forward tactics.
|
| 4/5 of my last solo queue lobbies were solid -- people
| communicating and playing decently well together. Can't ask for
| more.
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| Moved on to PUBG and then Warzone which one may argue was a
| downgrade to PUBG, but I still stick with it for social
| gaming.
|
| For deep gaming with competitive elements nothing can touch
| Escape from Tarkov for me.
| Vt71fcAqt7 wrote:
| CS is currently at an all time peak of 1.8 million concurrent
| players, including an actively growing pool of new users. There
| is no marketing for game, let alone "peer pressure." It is
| exactly the chase to outrun becoming "outdated" by adding
| faulty game mechanics that these players are looking to avoid.
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| Not disputing the popularity.
|
| It's just that not having ADS into iron sights or vaulting in
| 2023 game feels archaic. The movement is incredibly clunky; I
| suppose to preserve that 2000 feel.
|
| Sure Valve didn't want to break the expectations, and lose a
| skin-selling cash cow. I was just hoping it would be more
| than a VERY subtle facelift and more of a very incremental
| update than a 2.0
|
| The marketing was simple - they replaced CS:GO with the new
| version. It's like Twitter changing to X.com without
| marketing the new brand
| pityJuke wrote:
| > It's just that not having ADS into iron sights or
| vaulting in 2023 game feels archaic.
|
| And thank god. Nobody was asking for thi.s
|
| > The movement is incredibly clunky
|
| Clunky to some is incredibly layered to others. Simple, yet
| oh so difficult to master, but crisp to input (well...
| there's some nonsense with the subtick system currently
| making it less crisp than players want, but that can be
| overcome). CS has multiple movement based subcommunities
| for a reason.
|
| (from your original comment) > Just move on.
|
| Because you enjoy the mechanics of other competitive
| shooter titles, doesn't mean that everyone does. You seem
| to think that if everyone played Apex, Warzone or Tarkov
| they'd suddenly enjoy it, and presumably their PC or some
| other factor limits them. Newsflash: plenty have played the
| others and come back to CS.
|
| It's akin to telling a rugby player: hey, why are you still
| playing rugby? American Football is so much better. Rugby
| is an archaic game from the 1900s.
| ejj28 wrote:
| Part of why I like CS so much vs modern 'live service' games
| is that I can play whenever I feel like it and I never feel
| like I'm missing out on something happening, and when I come
| back after not playing for weeks or months, everything's the
| way it was when I left.
| ejj28 wrote:
| I don't think you can dismiss 1.8 million concurrent players on
| CS:GO back in May of this year as just "peer pressure or
| nostalgia". Plenty of people obviously still find it extremely
| fun, myself included.
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| CS:GO had a huge botting problem, game being free to play +
| rewards you with items that you could sell on the market
| place, people would afk farm crates, massively inflating the
| player count
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| I feel for the Mac users in spirit: Linux users have often
| received the same answer ("There aren't enough Linux buyers of
| this game to justify the development/support costs of porting.").
| OTOH, Counter-Strike 2 actually has a native Linux build even
| without Proton, so, this particular title isn't a problem for us.
| HansHamster wrote:
| It would be weird for Valve not to support Linux, given that
| the Steam Deck runs it. They could of course use Proton to run
| it, but AFAIR (most of(?)) the previous CS versions also had
| native Linux support. (Not sure about Mac support in the
| previous releases?)
| milesvp wrote:
| It would also be weird to me for them to not have linux ports
| of their engines after blogging about the performance and bug
| squashing benefits of doing so for previous game engines.
| Matheus_17 wrote:
| I would be interested to read about that, could you post
| the source on it?
| milesvp wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4327908
|
| This is one of the threads I remember reading about this.
| The blog seems to be offline, but you might find some
| luck with the wayback machine.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20190323200813/http://blogs.v
| alv...
|
| In any event, around this time they found a lot of
| optimizations porting to linux that they then back ported
| to the windows client. This was 10 years ago, so the
| zeitgeist in the company may have changed, but I've
| certainly taken to heart the idea that you should be
| cross compiling to at least one different target whenever
| you can to improve your engineering. The earlier you
| start the cheaper the cost of doing so as well. (This
| isn't the only company doing so at the time talking about
| gains of cross compilation either, and not just games)
| charcircuit wrote:
| Half Life Alyx didn't support Linux on release and I had to
| play it via proton
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| There was a Mac version of CS:GO, so because that game has
| been replaced by CS2, anybody playing it last month has lost
| it now.
| RockRobotRock wrote:
| Isn't that kind of messed up? CS:GO used to cost money,
| some users paid for something they can't play anymore.
| itishappy wrote:
| Kinda? Honestly that's just how online games work.
|
| CS:GO is over a decade old at this point, and has been
| free for 5 years. What should we expect?
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Expect that you don't lose access to a game you have?
|
| They didn't just release a new game: they literally
| removed the previous game people had and replaced it with
| a new, incompatible game.
|
| They didn't have to do that, they could have made a new
| game entry and earned their new install base by...
| putting out something that was better than the last entry
| and letting the players decide?
|
| But much easier to just remove the last entry.
|
| It's the kind of nonsense people normally jump at
| developers for, but because Valve is apparently still the
| darling of the gaming world so people seem to be excusing
| it.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Apple kinda set the tone here with their depreciation of
| 32-bit execution modes and OpenGL, plus their general
| hostility towards open or cross-platform APIs. By
| removing support for the old way of doing things and
| refusing to meet in the middle with developer frameworks,
| you end up with a platform that benefits nobody but the
| license-holders. That's what happened with DirectX, an
| _actually_ useful API that Valve invests millions of
| dollars in spurning anyways. Why _would_ they kiss the
| Metal ring?
|
| CS:GO still launches now that CS2 exists. Never mind the
| fact that the source code leaked, you can still install
| CS:GO from Steam _or_ run a cracked copy without VAC
| support. Valve supported unofficial servers from the get-
| go, so diehard CS:GO fans on Mac can play any version
| they like for as long as Apple chooses to support it.
|
| > Valve is apparently still the darling of the gaming
| world
|
| Damn these alternative App Stores and their powerful
| competition!
| BoorishBears wrote:
| This is an insane amount of noise to throw out for such a
| simple point...
|
| Valve made a new game: Instead of releasing it as a new
| game, they abused a loophole to force said new game onto
| people's devices without them having any say in the
| matter.
|
| In other words, a piece of software they didn't ask for
| is being installed, and the software they _did_ ask for
| is now hidden behind workarounds.
|
| _
|
| Apple plays no part in any of that: trying to paint not
| abusing your digital distribution platform... as being
| equivalent kissing Apple's ass is nonsensical to the
| point of absurdity.
| hotnfresh wrote:
| You can play CS:GO locally against bots. It's the only
| way I've played it, in fact.
|
| And I did pay for it.
| IntelMiner wrote:
| Valve seems to intend on just releasing the original
| CS:GO as an (unsupported) title with community run
| servers
| crooked-v wrote:
| They could have just... kept the existing game listing
| as-is (but unsupported) and released CS2 as a separate
| game listing.
| itishappy wrote:
| Why? Not trying to be difficult, but what would they get
| out of this?
| Philpax wrote:
| Game preservation, options for people who can't play CS2,
| keeping a clear chronology of the game's history.
|
| Replacing CSGO with CS2 is the oddity.
| justincredible wrote:
| [dead]
| mehlmao wrote:
| You can still download and play CS:GO. Right click >
| Properties > Betas. I've used ti for playing a mod with
| friends that doesn't work in CS2 yet. Of course, there's
| less players now.
| sevagh wrote:
| Mac users are voluntarily in the walled garden of a _trillion
| dollar company_, it's a bit different from Linux.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Are you suggesting that they are more or less deserving of
| sympathy?
| dpc_01234 wrote:
| Yes. Absolutely.
|
| We are not talking here about people trying to uplift
| themselves or humanity around them, and get/give access to
| education, Internet, computing, etc. We're talking about
| people who dropped 2 grands to buy into an luxurious anti-
| freedom walled garden.
| sevagh wrote:
| Much less, much much less. Imagine paying $4,999 USD for a
| device from a company with $2.8T market cap and blaming
| anybody except Apple for the drawbacks of your platform.
| asdff wrote:
| macbook air is like the same price as a comparable dell
| astrange wrote:
| The platform is fine. It can play Windows games using
| WINE just like Linux can.
| vetinari wrote:
| * As long as the games are 64-bit and while Rosetta is
| still available.
| astrange wrote:
| No, Win32 works too. If Rosetta stops being available
| there's always qemu.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| qemu is dog slow, and it's barely working enough to get
| Windows 7 x86 to boot on a M2 (not to mention that the
| UTM guest tools are mostly broken, so no acceleration
| anywhere).
| kcb wrote:
| Except without the primary api that makes gaming on WINE
| viable. Vulkan with DXVK and VKD3D.
| Alupis wrote:
| That's... not _fine_.
|
| As great as WINE can be, it's not native. Apple has gone
| out of their way to prevent you from enjoying games on
| their systems.
|
| And who do the users blame? Game makers - not Apple...
| astrange wrote:
| > Apple has gone out of their way to prevent you from
| enjoying games on their systems.
|
| How, by having a different OS? Sorry about that I guess.
|
| (If it had native Vulkan it wouldn't matter. The most
| effective strategy, the one Microsoft uses, is to buy all
| the game studios.)
|
| > And who do the users blame? Game makers - not Apple...
|
| Calling Valve a game maker is a stretch; as a company
| they're famously unwilling to actually make games. See
| gaben's allergy to the number 3.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > If it had native Vulkan
|
| Aside from a subset of Android devices, what platform has
| Vulkan as the default API?
|
| Windows/XBox has DirectX. Playstation has GNMX. Macs/iOS
| Devices have Metal. Nintendo uses NVN.
| out_of_protocol wrote:
| Windows, Linux, SteamOS, Android, Switch
| astrange wrote:
| NVN is the native API on Switch.
| Alupis wrote:
| Depends what you mean by "default". Windows ships with
| DirectX, OpenGL and Vulkan support. Call of Duty runs on
| Vulkan by default, for instance.
|
| Vulkan is notable as being new (doesn't have legacy
| baggage OpenGL and DirectX have), is natively cross-
| platform, and is often more performant than other options
| for modern games.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > Windows ships with DirectX, OpenGL and Vulkan support.
|
| Windows ships with DirectX. Your graphics card's software
| package can add support for other APIs.
| Alupis wrote:
| Graphics API support is usually provided by drivers - and
| Windows ships with drivers that support Vulkan.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Graphics card drivers are also provided by the Graphics
| card vendor, not Microsoft.
| astrange wrote:
| Vulkan is not cross-platform if you include cross-GPU
| vendor, because it's too low level for that. You'd want
| to rewrite for different GPUs.
| astrange wrote:
| Linux and Steam Deck, ironically.
|
| Though, for Windows it matters more what the GPU vendor
| wants you to use. Don't remember what that is atm.
| Alupis wrote:
| > How, by having a different OS? Sorry about that I
| guess.
|
| > (If it had native Vulkan it wouldn't matter. The most
| effective strategy, the one Microsoft uses, is to buy all
| the game studios.)
|
| By making their OS easy to target by game makers. There's
| no good excuse - Apple has access to the same graphics
| pipelines as everyone else. XPlat game engines have
| boiled it down to mostly a checkbox these days... so
| where's OSX? Apple has a lot of work to do before that's
| a reality.
|
| > Calling Valve a game maker is a stretch;
|
| You can't be serious, are you? Valve's titles are among
| the most popular games in the history of games. They may
| make most of their money through Steam, but to say Valve
| doesn't make games is ridiculous.
|
| That wasn't even the point - Apple users will blame the
| actual studios/developers for not supporting OSX when the
| blame lies at Apple's feet.
|
| Billions in annual profit, zero f's given about gaming on
| their platform. It's a choice - and one Apple users need
| to comprehend. Apple doesn't care.
| robertoandred wrote:
| You think cross-platform game engines don't support
| Metal? They do, and have for a decade.
| Alupis wrote:
| Who else supports Metal? Oh, that's right - only Apple.
|
| There's more to game support than just graphics API.
|
| Apple chooses to make game support on OSX hard - and
| shocker... you don't get games supporting OSX. Who can we
| blame? Apple...
|
| Just like Apple chooses to make Linux kernel support hard
| on M1/M2 and leaves it entirely up to volunteers to make
| it work. Who do you blame? The Kernel developers or
| Apple?
| astrange wrote:
| > Valve doesn't make games is ridiculous
|
| Valve is not a normal company; there's no hierarchy and
| they're only capable of doing things if someone at the
| company decides to pay attention to it.
|
| Do you remember what happened to TF2? It first degraded
| into an item trading game, then they abandoned it for
| years and it was full of bots. There's no reason
| Overwatch and Apex should've replaced it except that they
| stopped fighting for it.
| Alupis wrote:
| TF2 was released in 2007... and has over 100k players
| playing right now as you read this[1].
|
| Counter-Strike is still one of the most-played games
| ever. CS:GO had an average of almost 1 million daily
| players while AAA Games like CoD Warzone hover around
| 200-500k.
|
| DOTA/DOTA2 also rakes it in. They also have many very
| successful single-player games. Valve is a wildly
| successful game company - they just don't do the "yearly
| release" dance...
|
| [1] https://steamcharts.com/app/440
| astrange wrote:
| > TF2 was released in 2007... and has over 100k players
| playing right now as you read this[1].
|
| They fixed it again after people sassed them enough about
| it, but it was always a better game than Overwatch and
| there's no reason people should've been tricked into
| playing that.
|
| (Though, I don't know if the people on right now are
| actually playing TF2 or just trading hats.)
| hadlock wrote:
| TF2 today is mostly unplayable due to bots and weirdness
| with their player matching game. I put a lot of hours
| into TF2 and the experience is almost unrecognizable
| today. CS:GO was, I think, completely outsourced to a
| third party. They still produce some game-like artifacts
| but primarily they're the owner and operator of the
| premier online games store
| Alupis wrote:
| CS:GO is complicated - it started as a console port of
| CS:Source by a 3rd party developer, then was taken in-
| house and transformed into a full stand-alone new
| Counter-Strike game. So, it was indeed developed by
| Valve.
|
| IDK anything about TF2 - but bots or not, 100k active
| daily players is nothing to sneeze at for a 16 year old
| game.
|
| They are indeed the premier online game store - yes...
| but saying they are not a game developer is absurd. They
| don't release a new title every year, but when they do,
| it's a huge hit.
| zamalek wrote:
| So then it should be able to play CS2 via WINE, rendering
| all of this is moot?
| astrange wrote:
| You'd have to install Steam under WINE too, which does
| work fine but would be confusing to have two of them.
| kelsey9876543 wrote:
| Anyone that can afford a professional mac setup already
| has a gaming setup if they want to play games.
| Razengan wrote:
| If you're judging how much sympathy people "deserve" by
| what they spend their own money on, you deserve even
| less.
|
| Here's the most basic thing about purchases: People spend
| money on what they think is worth it. So the millions of
| Mac users decided the drawbacks of Windows/PC weren't
| worth the money.
| lukeschlather wrote:
| I think you're missing some nuances of the conversation
| here. A lot of Apple buyers celebrate the fact that Apple
| intentionally prevents interoperability with large
| swathes of software. So if someone is complaining that
| software doesn't work on an Apple product, they don't
| "deserve sympathy" because they've deliberately chosen a
| product where that is ostensibly a selling point.
| starttoaster wrote:
| Apple's absolute top end models might go for $5,000, but
| then again, have you bought gaming computer components
| lately? I can't imagine I spent far off of $3000 for my
| gaming computer all things taken into consideration
| (besides peripherals of course.) I only have not
| attempted to tally up the cost because I fear it would
| make me sick. Without actually listing a real drawback to
| using the platform besides "software providers decided
| not to support the platform," you come off as one of
| those drones that mindlessly hate on Apple products only
| because you don't want to pay for them. And to be clear,
| I'm not even your supposed opposition, in that I don't
| even own any Apple products besides an iPhone SE (which
| are notoriously cheaper than flagship Android phones.) I
| just find the Apple hating bickering to be about as
| childish as the Playstation vs Xbox console argument.
|
| And yes, I consider your comment to be childish bickering
| primarily because you don't have another argument besides
| "their product is more expensive than it's worth
| comparing hardware to hardware." Apple users understand
| that they're actually paying a premium for the software
| (the operating system), as well as the designed and
| usually fetching exterior (which to be fair does look
| nice, and I tend to prefer Macbook charging ports over
| Dell's old barrel ports.) Which, there is something to be
| said about an operating system that decided they don't
| want to run Java anymore. I'll grant that their software
| might have merit. Java web start apps are the bane of my
| enterprise existence.
| xmprt wrote:
| I sympathize with them but I also sympathize with Valve for
| being put in a position where they have to support an
| extremely close and opinionated platform that can change at
| any moment just because a trillion dollar company decides
| to.
| syntaxing wrote:
| I honestly don't get this rationale though. Why is this
| different from Linux? It's like blaming Linux users for using
| Linux and they should have used Windows instead if you really
| want to game.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Apple has money to actually invest in games and the tech
| surrounding it. Don't think the case is same for Linux.
| vntx wrote:
| How is it the same? Apple runs a closed ecosystem and has
| shown it doesn't care for gaming for a long time so its
| user should know that by now. Linux is an open platform and
| the results show. SteamDeck is running on Linux and can run
| most Steam games. Macs still can't. Apple users should take
| responsibility on this one.
| egypturnash wrote:
| I am now having a brief fantasy of a world where Apple
| pulls Proton into the OS as a Windows emulation layer for
| games and starts pushing their changes upstream just like
| Valve does.
|
| I can think of many reasons why it would never happen but
| it sure would be nice. Not that I haven't been voting
| against Mac games with my wallet for years, I've had a
| Mac to get shit done with and a rotating set of consoles
| to play games on since about 2000, and _very_
| occasionally bought a point-and-click adventure for the
| Mac.
| drusepth wrote:
| I think the (implied) distinction is this:
|
| * Apple has billions of dollars and a hierarchy of
| decision-makers who could prioritize the R&D and
| implementation of making "gaming on Mac" a reality
|
| * Linux is a distributed, community project without
| billions of dollars or top-down decision-makers who can
| unilaterally prioritize making "gaming on Linux" a reality
| nani8ot wrote:
| > Linux is [...] without [...] top-down decision makers
| who can unilaterally prioritize making "gaming on Linux"
| a reality
|
| I'd say Valve is exactly that. Valve pays many developers
| their salary who are responsible for making almost all
| single player games work on Linux via proton (wine, dxvk,
| vkd3d). Although they do push their changes upstream.
| culopatin wrote:
| Linux users are there at gunpoint?
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Here's to hoping that with gaming on Linux gaining prominence
| (thanks in no small part to Wine/Proton and Steam Deck), Linux
| overcomes Windows as the go-to OS for gaming.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Never going to happen, after all Proton emulates Windows.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Yes. But that's the thing - if more and more people play
| games on Linux (even through Wine), there will be more
| Linux machines around.
|
| Developers might be more interested in developing for it if
| it is more than a footnote of an OS, possibly creating a
| positive feedback loop. Especially with companies such as
| Valve invested into it.
|
| A man can at least dream, no?
| pjmlp wrote:
| Worked great for OS/2.
| yesco wrote:
| OS/2 was competing on the enterprise market, I don't
| really see it as a good comparison to the Linux/Proton
| situation, yet for some reason I see it brought up a lot
| in these discussions. Why would OS/2 come to mind and not
| the successes of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_e
| xtend,_and_extinguis... or
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX ?
| beebeepka wrote:
| Proton Is Not an Emulator
| CelticBard wrote:
| PINE
| xethos wrote:
| And Windows 10 can emulate the Super Nintendo. But multiple
| consoles are not as cheap as the Windows box you already
| have, more annoying to setup or stow, and don't have some
| little QoL addons, like freezing the game.
|
| What you're emulating is irrelevant. What matters is which
| provides a better experience to you, the end user. One
| choice is actively being worked on, while the other
| (despite under-the-hood perf. improvements IIRC) seems to
| garner more loathing and disdain with each release.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Except AAA game developers no longer care about Super
| Nintendo.
| belthesar wrote:
| I think you missed the forest for the trees there.
| oaththrowaway wrote:
| Wine is not an emulator
| coldpie wrote:
| I hate this reply. Wine is not an emulator, but it does
| emulate Windows('s behavior).
| karolist wrote:
| To those who might not be aware: Wine originally stood
| for "Wine is not an emulator", a recursive acronym that
| were popular in the geek culture a few decades ago. Same
| for KDE Desktop Environment and GNU's not Unix.
| IntelMiner wrote:
| It * _approximates*_ Windows behaviour and acts as an
| intermediary layer of "glue logic"
|
| An emulator will generally try to provide an abstracted
| set of hardware and other features
| paulmd wrote:
| https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/1318672
|
| I guess this falls under "other features" but it's pretty
| common to emulate systems behavior via a re-
| implementation, or thunking calls to a copy of the
| original libraries, etc.
|
| Oracle uses the verb "emulate" to describe branded zones,
| which function similarly, as well. I think it's
| semantically fine to call this emulation, it's just high-
| level emulation.
|
| https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E53394_01/html/E54762/gitrc.ht
| ml
| pjmlp wrote:
| Indeed, the technical implementation doesn't matter for
| the context that it helps to strenghen Windows market
| position among game studios.
| yesco wrote:
| Proton is just a new desktop application API for Linux, one
| specialized for gaming. While the win32 API is certainly
| not an open standard, it is a stable one, arguably more
| stable than even browser APIs, and obviously more stable
| than the various APIs offered by Linux.
|
| Years ago I was optimistic that fixed shared library
| runtimes, such as the ones offered by Steam, would be
| enough to make native game development for Linux viable.
| But even with these, so many things simply break in places
| they should NEVER break, and can only be fixed by
| recompiling them (thanks glibc), so I no longer feel this
| way.
|
| While my heart bleeds for open source, video games are
| fundamentally more art than function, so the expectation
| that the user (or the upstream maintainer, Steam) needs to
| be capable of recompiling them is simply unrealistic when
| considering the licensing & support required for this.
| Video games _need_ a stable API, perhaps even more than
| most other types of software. A game built 10 years ago
| should continue to work when run today.
|
| When considering all of this, along with the fact that
| Valve is the only large organization with the resources and
| incentive to fix this situation. The only real path forward
| Valve has here is to create their own custom desktop
| application API for Linux that goes beyond just a set of
| shared libraries and is fully integrated, meaning third-
| party game developers don't need get involved in the often
| messy inter-library politics the Linux community is
| accustomed too.
|
| But if Valve really needs to go that far, why invent a
| whole new API for it? Why not just copy win32? That's the
| most popular API among game developers after all. In fact
| there is already a Linux runtime that not only supports
| win32, but actually treats desktop stability as a core
| priority: WINE. Why not just throw resources at that
| instead of making something new?
|
| While I'm mostly speculating here, I suspect that this line
| of reasoning is what gave birth to Proton. It has also led
| to interesting situations, consider this: Elden Ring on
| release had/has a problem with micro-stuttering, this issue
| was patched in Proton very quickly, within the first week
| of release, but remains an issue on Windows to this day.
| This means that right now, Linux is the best platform to
| play Elden Ring on if you want the best performance and
| graphics. Much like video drivers are updated to fix bugs
| for individual games, Proton now fills this role as well,
| but with an even faster development cycle.
|
| This highlights one of the key benefits of Proton: it
| scopes an entire Win32 runtime (wineprefix) to each game. A
| hasty hotfix for one game will not break another, each game
| needs to only pin the runtime that works, and no further
| tweaking is necessary. You simply _cannot_ do this on
| Windows, Microsoft does not have this kind of flexibility.
|
| A future where Proton outlives Windows, one where Proton
| expands the win32 API to include more features never
| supported by Windows, while I can't say _it will_ happen,
| it certainly _can_ happen, and I 'm excited to see where
| this goes.
| keyringlight wrote:
| One thing that gets me with proton is that as you say it
| effectively 'crowns' win32 as the PC gaming platform, but
| it seems like a weird situation where MS control it and
| valve/codeweavers are constantly chasing them for any
| new/changed functionality so their sub-platform remains
| relevant. I think an opportunity has passed to divorce PC
| gaming (or perhaps "consumer real time 3D"?) from
| MS/windows because Valve don't want to take on all that
| responsibility, and no one else is interested enough to
| set up a consortium to pick up that gauntlet.
|
| This is my cynical side, but I'm sure they don't mind the
| opportunity to get their store in front of people, both
| with the deck and by how closely knit steam is to
| providing gaming to non-windows PCs. In my view PC gaming
| is in a weird spot right now if you try defining "what is
| the platform?" Is it windows, is it steam (and all the
| other features it has), is it x86, how much can/should a
| game be 'portable' from one ecosystem or enclave of PC.
| There's also been issues with games like Starfield not
| working with the intel Arc GPUs until a few days ago that
| have me wondering (from a fairly naive point of view) how
| closely that aspect is tied to assuming nvidia/AMD are
| the only possibilities versus how well it was written to
| the abstraction layer, assuming intel were compliant.
| jorl17 wrote:
| If enough players play via Proton and want to stay that
| way, then the subset of the Win32 API that is well
| supported for Proton can itself become the standard. MS
| might add new APIs, but developers may choose to keep the
| old ones, therefore targeting the largest userbase.
|
| Of course, MS might also start changing the behaviour of
| lots of APIs, deprecating them left and right,
| effectively trying to kill Proton. But that means they'll
| also kill their own backwards compatibility.
|
| If, again, Proton becomes "popular enough", I don't see
| how MS can stop it short of finding some way of
| preventing developers from using old APIs in new
| applications (which would very likely be anti-competitive
| behaviour).
|
| I've been a macOS user for 11 years now, but I hope that,
| however unlikely, Proton wins out :)
| surgical_fire wrote:
| I would welcome a future where Proton is the target
| environment for game development.
|
| I never thought about it that way, but I can see this as
| a possibility based on how you framed it. Have an upvote.
| bobajeff wrote:
| >But if Valve really needs to go that far, why invent a
| whole new API for it? Why not just copy win32?
|
| I can think of at least two reasons:
|
| Legal - APIs might be copyrightable in the future.
|
| Control over changes - Not having to play ketchup every
| time Microsoft changes or updates an API. Windows APIs do
| still change and break applications they have compensated
| for this with application specific shims.
|
| That being said I can't imagine what Valve would come up
| with. Maybe they could base something around Vulkan, Musl
| and Wayland.
| pjmlp wrote:
| "OS/2 runs Windows applications better than Windows",
| yep.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Perhaps ironically, I find it easier to run older games
| in Linux than it was to run them on Windows itself before
| I made the switch.
| capitainenemo wrote:
| Isn't this the whole reason Valve created steam runtimes
| so that they could have native linux binaries with also
| long patch lifetimes? AFAIK they even select Ubuntu LTS
| releases so they can surf off upstream patching for
| longer.
|
| Ubuntu's extended support even pushes that out to 10
| years, and I imagine Valve could also do its own patching
| (or just ignore security concerns).
|
| Nice thing w/ Valve is they allow you to use your
| distro's libraries or switch to the runtime, depending on
| how much performance you are trying to eke out of a game.
|
| Odds are anything written a decade ago doesn't need
| cutting edge performance though.
| yesco wrote:
| I briefly touched on this but steam runtimes (aka shared
| library runtimes) in practice aren't as isolated as one
| would assume, an update to glibc is often enough to break
| applications targeting them. Furthermore, in practice
| many maintainers think little of video games and are
| often comfortable breaking them if it helps with the
| server side of things.
|
| For evidence of this, look no further than Ubuntu, the
| basis of the steam runtime, dropping 32bit support and
| breaking all software (video games) that depend on it.
| Sure you can still use it for older stuff, but there is
| no future here.
| capitainenemo wrote:
| Well. Microsoft is also dropping 32 bit support for
| Windows 10 in 2025. I guess that makes Proton some weird
| hackish abstraction layer over the continuously updated
| underlying linux libs. Would be funny if Proton gets
| pulled into Windows releases to maintain support for
| legacy games as Microsoft shortens the length of their
| support.
| yesco wrote:
| It would be _very_ amusing to me if certain games on
| Windows could only be run via a hacky WSL - > Proton
| layer. Yet somehow not surprising ;)
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Is Microsoft dropping support for 32bit _binaries_ in
| 2025? I think it 's just dropping hardware support.
| diogenes4 wrote:
| ...isn't that just evidence that windows is actively being
| replaced?
| pjmlp wrote:
| Rather the evidence Linux will never have native games,
| not even studios targeting Android NDK care about
| GNU/Linux.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| The only reason Linux now sees support is because it tied in
| with Valve's desire for a handheld console and them wanting to
| rattle MS's cage a bit by showing how much better games ran on
| Linux. It worked; MS has devoted more effort in recent years to
| fixing gaming issues.
|
| The number of Steam Decks pales in comparison to the number of
| Macs, which now represent 30% market share of desktops, while
| linux is still stuck around 3%.
| dinkblam wrote:
| Apple does not have a market share of 30% of desktops.
|
| Even it it had, what matters here is actual number of
| players.
|
| Steam stats come in at Windows 96.94% Linux 1.63% macOS 1.43%
| [1].
|
| So when they say excluded platforms account for 1%, they are
| right, barring rounding errors.
|
| [1]: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/
| pjmlp wrote:
| No, but it has more iOS and iPad devices than Valve will
| ever ship SteamDecks.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| iOS isn't relevant to Valve due to the way Apple chooses
| to do business, so why bring that up?
| SirMaster wrote:
| What about after sideloading is allowed?
| Macha wrote:
| The vast majority of mobile games are not really
| substitutes for PC games the way e.g. console games are,
| except in the super broad "Netflix: Our biggest
| competitor is video games because customers only have so
| much time" way.
| pjmlp wrote:
| It is relevant to Apple customers that care about playing
| games and don't need to care Valve exists at all.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Rounding 3% to 1% is a hell of a rounding!
| zymhan wrote:
| Steam stats won't account for users who don't install Steam
| because there are no games they can run.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Valve is more concerned with meeting games were they are,
| not where they hypothetically could be. In the case of
| Linux (more gamers on Linux than Macs, although it's
| close), Valve has additional reason to care because they
| view Linux as insurance against anti-competitive behavior
| from Microsoft. Clearly they don't feel the same way
| about Macs (makes sense, because their Windows customers
| could more readily switch to Linux than Macs). So if
| gamers are already acquiring Windows/Linux machines to
| play games, why should Valve waste their resources trying
| to bring about a hypothetical reality where gamers choose
| to buy Macs instead?
|
| It's not Valve's responsibility to engage in pro-Mac
| activism. It would be weird if they were doing so.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| > Valve is more concerned with meeting games were they
| are, not where they hypothetically could be.
|
| I have no comment on the rest of it, but this is clearly
| false. Valve has been trying to make gaming on Linux
| happen for a long time now.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| As I said, Linux has more importance to Valve than can be
| accounted for by its popularity because Valve sees Linux
| as a hedge against anti-competitive behavior from
| Microsoft.
| freedomben wrote:
| > _Valve has additional reason to care because they view
| Linux as insurance against anti-competitive behavior from
| Microsoft. Clearly they don 't feel the same way about
| Macs (makes sense, because their Windows customers could
| more readily switch to Linux than Macs)._
|
| Agreed, and I think that's quite wise. When it comes to
| escaping tight-reigned dictators that can threaten your
| business, Apple is out of the frying pan an into the
| fire. Imagine if they invested heavily into macs and then
| Apple required all mac software to go through their store
| (with 30% cut of course) like they do on iOS? That would
| be disastrous
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Why? Mac users are cornered into exclusively a mobile
| device(MacBooks) and will more than likely purchase game
| consoles... or even just use remote play services(I use
| GeForce Now)
|
| Windows users are already on Windows and Windows machines
| are much more open to dual-booting Linux... if needed.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| > Mac users are cornered into exclusively a mobile
| device(MacBooks)
|
| Huh? iMac, Mac Mini, Mac Studio, Mac Pro.
| Nodebuck wrote:
| Valve has supported Linux for over a decade[1], way before
| they made any hardware. It makes sense for them to not rely
| on Microsoft which have threatened their position as a gaming
| store before with UWP games appearing exclusively on
| Microsoft Store and the win32 platform potentially being
| killed off (which all turned out to be a flop in the end).
|
| [1] https://store.steampowered.com/oldnews/9289
| dangus wrote:
| There's another problem with Mac gaming: even though Macs
| have a higher marketshare than they've ever had before, they
| aren't owned by people who are expecting to use them for
| games.
|
| Someone who is into the PC gaming scene already owns a gaming
| PC by now. If they own a Mac it's probably their productivity
| machine.
|
| It's obviously an anecdote but that's how I do things. I have
| a gaming PC and all it does is gaming. My Mac is for portable
| computing and general productivity. Even though I own a Mac
| and some of my games work on Mac (like Baldur's Gate 3), I
| rarely if ever use that Mac for gaming.
|
| I think it's on Apple to put real money into changing that
| perception (and to make the OS a little better for gaming -
| for example, Windows handles window management for games
| better, Mac handles mice with scroll wheels terribly unless
| you get third party software).
| some-guy wrote:
| I'm sure the number of Steam Decks is far higher than the
| number of people gaming on their Mac.
| philistine wrote:
| Nope.
| throitallaway wrote:
| > MS has devoted more effort in recent years to fixing gaming
| issues.
|
| Could've fooled me. Their first party title Halo MCC is
| riddled with bugs (crashes, textures not loading, etc.) and
| has cheaters flaunting super speed in multiplayer.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Delta Halo on Halo 2 is practically unbeatable on Legendary
| mode due to crashes, unless you use the original graphics.
| The big was reported to 343 years ago, I think back when
| MCC was still an Xbox exclusive, and they still haven't
| fixed it. And they don't give you any warning about it, you
| only figure it out after the game crashes halfway through
| the level for the 5th time and you decide to start Googling
| it.
| zamalek wrote:
| > The only reason Linux now sees support is because it tied
| in with Valve's desire for a handheld console
|
| Valve have been improving/supporting Linux gaming for almost
| a decade[1].
|
| Apple figured out that privacy is a marketable product. They
| don't do it because of altruism, they do it because it makes
| extreme amounts of money.
|
| Likewise, Valve figured out that doing good by the customer
| is a marketable product. Gamer loyalty to Valve is an
| insurmountable fortress that no other storefront has managed
| to pierce. The likes of TotalBiscuit and AngryJoe galvanized
| the PC gaming community into one that does not tolerate anti-
| consumer bullshit, and anti-consumer bullshit Apple does.
|
| > The number of Steam Decks pales in comparison to the number
| of Macs, which now represent 30% market share of desktops,
| while linux is still stuck around 3%.
|
| Which is completely irrelevant to gamers. A substantial
| amount choose to have a console and no desktop/laptop machine
| at all[2]. Linux is trending up [3], while MacOS trending
| down (and in addition is installed on fewer gaming machines
| than Linux overall) [4].
|
| MacOS is completely and utterly irrelevant to gaming - unless
| you're talking about Candy Crush and the sort. This is
| unlikely to change unless Apple has a radical change in
| direction regarding gaming; both in terms of hardware and
| business model. They have clearly and loudly demonstrated
| that they have no interest in either: you can't use GPUs with
| MacOS, and their fork of WINE is neither free nor upstreamed.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Machine_(computer)
| [2]: https://venturebeat.com/games/pc-and-console-sales-are-
| down-... [3]: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/
| [4]: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-
| Softw...
| dartharva wrote:
| Doesn't Counter Strike 2 have major performance issues on
| Linux? There exists a huge outcry of it not being playable on
| the Steam Deck.
| f1refly wrote:
| Performance is about equal to the windows build, the problem
| is most likely that steam deck hardware is not sufficient to
| play counter strike 2
| diogenes4 wrote:
| > the problem is most likely that steam deck hardware is
| not sufficient to play counter strike 2
|
| Seems nuts for a game whose entire draw is being able to be
| played on commodity hardware at high speeds.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| It'll prob run great on Steam Deck 2
| opyate wrote:
| And now this, getting charged $60 for a remaster.
|
| https://www.macrumors.com/2023/09/26/resident-evil-4-iphone-...
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| I've released software on Linux.
|
| The biggest problem isn't the small market share (3% of desktop
| users is still a decent chunk of customers), but the lack of
| standards and fragmentation making good QA basically
| impossible.
| struant wrote:
| Because it isn't really 3%. It is 300 distros with 0.01%
| each, and the fragmentation keeps getting worse.
| tmtvl wrote:
| Don't Ubuntu, Fedora, and Arch have like 90% of desktop
| GNU/Linux users?
| grecy wrote:
| It can be run using Apple's game porting toolkit.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNFf1y7GsFw
| WatchDog wrote:
| While it lacks a user-friendly installation process, I've had a
| great experience so far with running the windows version of
| steam via the game-porting-toolkit.
|
| I just run gameportingtoolkit-no-hud ~/my-
| game-prefix 'C:\Program Files (x86)/Steam/steam.exe'
|
| and a whole bunch of windows-only titles just work.
| Angostura wrote:
| I'm pretty irked by Valve's Mac support - no 64 bit support for
| Team Fortress 2 etc etc. So update to a M1 and you're done.
| tempodox wrote:
| M1 is also 64-bit only.
| astrange wrote:
| It's AArch64 only. WINE+Rosetta can run Win32 programs.
| RockRobotRock wrote:
| This was a problem before M1 macs. There was an OS update that
| shut off 32 bit entirely, don't remember which one.
| pohl wrote:
| Catalina removed 32-bit support, so Mojave was the last
| version with it, so Valve has had since October 2019 to get
| their 64-bit shit together -- arguably since June 2018 when
| Apple informed everybody that Mojave would be the last OS
| with 32-bit support.
| astrange wrote:
| Apple started telling people that 32-bit was deprecated
| something like fifteen years before it was actually
| removed. Everyone except video game programmers got the
| message, which says something about video game programmers.
| nick_ wrote:
| I use https://github.com/Whisky-App/Whisky to play CS2 on my M1
| Mac. It runs really well if you change the launch options to
| `-nojoy`, turn on vsync (or else it may crash every couple
| minutes), and can bear some audio glitches.
| dansalvato wrote:
| Thank you for the `-nojoy` suggestion, that seems to make it
| playable on CrossOver as well.
|
| It's a shame that Valve made this decision, because Apple is
| pushing hard to make a gaming comeback on Mac (hence Game
| Porting Toolkit), so we might see those numbers change in the
| next few years.
| diogenes4 wrote:
| > Apple is pushing hard to make a gaming comeback on Mac
|
| We hear this every few years; it's never been true. I'd be
| shocked if this new effort were any more successful.
| TinkersW wrote:
| Game Porting Toolkit isn't good enough, as it seems to be
| only for testing, still have to rewrite a bunch of shit in
| Apples proprietary nonsense and deal with heavy handed code
| signing crap.
| astrange wrote:
| Proprietary rendering APIs are extremely common (like...
| Direct3D) and completely not an issue. The ones on game
| consoles are /way/ more proprietary and unportable than
| Metal.
| TinkersW wrote:
| Game consoles have huge userbases that purchase games,
| thus the incentive to port is higher. You can also
| develop them from a Windows machine because all the tools
| are designed for that..
|
| Mac userbase that purchases games is small, they need to
| make it easier if they want more games. And Apple also
| doesn't want you developing on Windows-- you need to use
| this bloody Mac.
| astrange wrote:
| Apple actually does release Metal asset build tools for
| Windows, presumably so asset developers can work
| independently.
|
| https://mspoweruser.com/apple-metal-developer-tools-for-
| wind...
| joeman1000 wrote:
| But how is input lag? That's a crucial factor for counter
| strike.
| nick_ wrote:
| It's good. Vsync adds a small amount but my monitor is 144Hz
| so it adds less than half what a 60Hz would add (I think?).
| I've heard of some folks being able to play without Vsync and
| without crashes, but not me. Not yet at least.
| cptcobalt wrote:
| > Whisky is built on top of CrossOver 22.1.1, and Apple's own
| Game Porting Toolkit.
|
| Oh, this is so sick--I didn't know that anything that used the
| Game Porting Toolkit as something better than a developer tool
| existed yet. I'm going to make use of this.
|
| I have a M2 Pro Mac Studio as my primary computer, and I tend
| to use steam's streaming from my gaming PC to my mac for casual
| gaming, but there are sometimes I just want to natively run a
| game that isn't supported in macOS or streams quite poorly with
| Steam's streaming.
|
| (Why is my setup the way that it is? My gaming PC is in the
| garage--primarily to have a big VR playspace--and on early
| mornings it can just be too cold in there.)
| ncr100 wrote:
| In my experience with Crossover, it provides access to a lot
| of Windows games. And they are core to the proton/wine scene.
| So they are the shit. Gaming on your Mac with crossover is
| viable.
| mrpippy wrote:
| CrossOver 23.5 includes D3DMetal from the Game porting
| toolkit
| [deleted]
| SigmundA wrote:
| Was really hoping M series would open up Mac gaming, but
| definitely a chicken and egg situation along with Apple not
| really doing much to help. Still hoping things get better with
| game port toolkit and Mac Gpu getting better every generation.
|
| For now the best way to game on a Mac IMO is Sunshine/Moonlight
| and just run a gaming PC somewhere in the house, works perfect.
| dansalvato wrote:
| > with Apple not really doing much to help.
|
| I think Apple is starting to push hard to get into the gaming
| market. You already mentioned Game Porting Toolkit as an
| example, but they have been regularly giving the floor to AAA
| game studios during Apple's big keynote presentations. Notably,
| Capcom is bringing RE4 Remake to Apple devices, following
| Resident Evil Village. Death Stranding is also getting a macOS
| port soon.
|
| If I had to guess, I think Apple is actually going out of their
| way to financially incentivize these companies to port their
| games to Mac, even if sales are low (e.g. paying them to port
| the game). Throwing money at it may be a good way for them to
| get out of the chicken and egg problem.
| pjmlp wrote:
| There are enough games to play,
| https://www.macgamerhq.com/opinion/macos-metal-games/
| denzlwashington wrote:
| Just use GeForceNow, it is really good if you have a mac.
| romanovcode wrote:
| Noticeable input delay if you are used to PC gaming yourself.
| Insanity wrote:
| As far as I know that does constrain you in e.g mod usage. If
| you stream it from the cloud you can't mess with the game
| files.
|
| (I accept that this might nowadays make me a minority, although
| in games like GTA I think the modding community is pretty
| active still)
| vachina wrote:
| it is really good if you live next to a data center, and don't
| mind paying money every month to maintain the right to play the
| games you bought.
| kube-system wrote:
| Have you tried to play CS on GeForce Now? I have, the added
| latency makes it impossible to be competitive with anyone of
| even a moderate skill.
|
| It's probably great for other types of games where reaction
| times are not critical, but for competitive FPS esports titles,
| it's a nonstarter.
| [deleted]
| ouiouibaguette wrote:
| [dead]
| Insanity wrote:
| The only reason I still have a windows desktop is to play games
| at this point. Not a top of the line rig as I'm not too fuzzed
| about the graphics.
|
| I do wish I could go mac only - my desk would definitely look
| tidier. But I don't see it happening soon.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| Can you bootcamp your Mac?
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| Not with the newer arm64 chips. The best you can do is a VM,
| which is going to not going to be performant for demanding
| games. It might work okay for older titles.
| SalientBlue wrote:
| I recently switched to Nobara Linux (a gaming focused Fedora
| spin) and it has run every Steam game I've thrown at it outside
| of Street Fighter 6 (which runs, but at low settings and
| multiplayer is spotty). Proton has done wonders for Linux
| gaming and after over a month without booting my Windows
| partition at all I don't think I'm going back.
| dimgl wrote:
| +1. I can't stand Windows. I can't wait for the day I can use
| macOS as a daily driver for gaming (I already use it as a daily
| driver for everything else).
| wand3r wrote:
| Exactly. I am a casual gamer at best. I am an Apple power user.
| I lucked into a gaming PC a couple weeks ago for $50 at a
| thrift store. So I have a PC just for gaming. I think non MS
| users who game probably have the same. Likely a dual boot
| Linux/MS computer.
|
| It is kind of annoying you can't game on Macs, however thats
| just how things are. Cars handle better than Trucks, and Trucks
| can haul more than cars. There is a lot of overlap in what they
| can do, but ultimately they have different specialties.
|
| That said, my experience with Microsoft from a long time *nix
| users has been pretty horrible. I do think a lot of this is
| Microsoft, but a lot of it is going from being a poweruser to
| being a total novice is quite annoying.
| Scaevolus wrote:
| Proton is good enough to play most games on Linux without
| needing to dual boot.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| I'm also a primary mac user and have been almost my entire
| life. I have a pc that literally does nothing but play games,
| it's a stupid expense at this point. I may not bother to buy
| another to replace this one when it's finally to slow to
| bother with. May be a console life for me.
| hotnfresh wrote:
| Steam Deck is OK. Probably too expensive if you're not
| gonna play it as a portable ever, but not awful. The
| desktop experience is a jank-fest (the usual amount of
| Linux desktop jank, plus a whole pile more for some reason)
| but it's pretty good, actually, as long as you avoid
| desktop mode and stay in the Steam experience as much as
| possible.
|
| It is too underpowered to do much gaming at 1080p (let
| alone 4k) except older games, but handles its native ~720p
| pretty well. You have to go into desktop mode to get higher
| res than that (on an external monitor), but you'll only
| want to do that for games that are both older (so that it
| _can_ run them at tolerable frame rates at 1080p) and that
| really need the extra pixels, anyway. The Proton stuff
| works quite well, most things that run well on modern
| Windows in widescreen without a bunch of hand-ini-editing
| config tweaks or whatever work fine on the Steam Deck
| without much pain.
|
| Decent option if you catch it on sale. Depends on what you
| play, though. Some folks find its mouse emulation touchpad
| thingy decent, but I found it a fun-killing chore for any
| kind of pointy-clicky-draggy games (Paradox, various
| tactical war games). But, you can play those games docked
| with keyboard & mouse and they're ok.
|
| It's a hell of an emulation system for older console
| games....
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| If you've got a solid internet connection, streaming services
| have become pretty viable these days. I just stream GeForce Now
| to my MacBook, and just the fun novelty of playing Cyberpunk at
| 4k "on" a little laptop has yet to wear off.
| Insanity wrote:
| Yup, generally I would agree. But as I commented elsewhere on
| this post, I like to install mods for my games which is not
| something I could do with just the streaming solution as far
| as I know.
| bob1029 wrote:
| I am a big Microsoft guy but I am about to have zero windows
| machines in my home.
|
| The final justification for a physical windows desktop was to
| play games, but I haven't touched a single title in months.
| Gaming feels like something I am completely over at this point.
|
| My ideal tech stack at home is starting to look like one
| MacBook as you say. All the windows stuff I do for work is on a
| Windows365 desktop in the cloud. I've got a region within 10
| milliseconds of my home office and it's been working out great
| so far.
|
| Will probably get rid of these boxes before next year rolls
| around.
| freedomben wrote:
| > _I am a big Microsoft guy_
|
| Could you elaborate on this more? What do you mean? What
| makes you a big Microsoft guy? I mainly ask because
| everything else you said seems contradictory of that so I'm
| curious your definition
| bob1029 wrote:
| I strongly prefer their technology stack to any other:
| Azure, Visual Studio, .NET/C#, Windows Server, SQL Server,
| etc.
| [deleted]
| JAlexoid wrote:
| > Gaming feels like something I am completely over at this
| point.
|
| Which is why releasing games for Mac users has less sense,
| than Windows or Linux. You're probably in the category of a
| casual gamer, which is served well by mobile games.
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