Comment by stetrain
2 days ago
Yep. I know Apple has little motivation to support such a project but it would be great to see them work with Valve on this. Having the majority of Steam games "just work" on modern Macs, like they do on the Steam Deck, would be fantastic.
Apple leadership cares more about "games on the Mac App Store built for Metal on a Mac" than it cares about "games on the Mac". This won't change until leadership changes.
It does not matter what Apple wants if Steam ships their own compatibility layer.
Valve is all-in on Linux and their own hardware. They have no reason to invest tons into a platform with an uncooperative vendor who culturally DGAF about gaming. Why run from Windows only to jump into a more hostile ecosystem? You can still run 32-bit x86 games on Windows ARM, you know.
3 replies →
I don't think Valve has anything to gain from reinforcing Apple's walled garden.
Honest question, did Apple ever care about games on the Mac as a real priority?
Steve Jobs certainly didn't. I hope it changes because so many coders (Who are also gamers) now use Macbooks or Mac Minis as their development platform.
I remember a friend of mine, gloating about how he could play Unreal Tournament on Mac, and I looked at it, and man did it ever run natively. But I could see a lot rendering wrong and a lot of stutters.
I think the pentium compatibility stuff in the powermac was also supposed to attract gamers, but I recall not being able to progress past the installer for Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries, which would have been the game that made me change my mind. Ran the installer tho, which was something.
Apple already made it, it's just that it targets developers rather than end users: https://developer.apple.com/games/game-porting-toolkit/
I think it's more than "little motivation" if we're being honest. Right now Valve is quietly targeting MS' attempt to create a walled garden for gaming on Windows and (probably) cut them out. Their very clever approach has been a full end-run around the OS by using Proton, which I'm sure genuinely thrilled Apple... as long as Valve is only doing that to MS.
Why would Apple ever invite Valve to potentially do the same to them?
Especially looking at Apples recent gaming history.
When Cyberpunk, AC, and a couple other AAA titles came to macOS, Apple made a big deal of them being in the mac app store, specifically. They didn't go out of their way to call out that they run on mac, you can get them from Steam, etc. The big deal was they are in the app store.
That's where Apple wants mac gaming to happen so they can get their 30% cut.
I wish that weren't the case, but Apple's gonna Apple.
App stores for desktop computers have pretty consistently failed except for Steam.
I don't think I've installed anything from the App store on my Mini, instead I have just dropped all kinds of images into my Applications folder.
The Windows store is about as marginal as it can get. My corporate desktop at work is locked down with the Windows store disabled, they made it so I can elevate and do almost anything I need to do as a developers but I can't touch Policy Editor stuff and can't unlock it. I miss WSL2 but that's the only thing I miss. I install all sorts of things for work and just install them the way we did before there was Windows 8.
In the Windows 8 era my home computer always got the metadata database corrupted fror the store pretty quickly even though I didn't use it very much. The only thing I really wanted from it was the application to use my scanner back when I had an HP printer. It was obvious that it was possible to rebuild that database because it got fixed temporarily whenever it did one of the 6 month updates but people I talked to in Microsoft Support said I should nuke my account and spend hours reconfiguring all the applications that I actually use just so I can use this one crapplet. Switched to Epson and they have their own installer/updater that works like a normal Windows application. [1] I don't think the machine I built that started on Win 10 has any problems with the store but all I really know or care about is that WSL2 works and it does.
Microsoft dreams that you might buy games from the Windows store but it has an air of unreality to it. If Microsoft tried pulling Activision games out of Steam you know it would just force them to write off the Activision acquisition earlier rather than later.
2 replies →
Everyone wants their 30% cut into gaming. It's not worth battling a trillion dollar company on this case.
Sure. And Valve want their own 30% cut.
It does suck if you just want to play games on hardware you own that can handle said games.
Apples biggest weakness is games. But it has a pretty large install base when compared to Linux (not counting phones or servers here).Seems like a win/win. Apple gets to address their weaknesses and Valve gets a large target market.
I actually see it as the reverse. Valve might be going for the whole pie and want to carve out a niche for their Steam Box. Inviting Apple to the party might detract from that effort. Or at the very least distract from their main focus.
> Apple gets to address their weaknesses and Valve gets a large target market.
I don't think Apple wants any non-Apple store addressing their weaknesses, especially a solution as competent and well-funded as Steam.
If Valve gains Apple-user mindshare on Mac, what prevents them from expanding to iPhones and iPads in the EU, and likely elsewhere if anti-monopoly laws get entrenched? IIRC, Services is the fastest growing revenue source at Apple.
1 reply →
>Valve gets a large target market
They don't need Apple for that. People who game already game elsewhere. Steam on Apple feels pointless. I wouldn't be surprised, if Valve will go for smartphones with their own at some point
1 reply →
Games are not a weakness for Apple. They have all the gaming revenue they seem to care about with mobile. They just don't have proper/immediate motivation to apply that effort to desktop. I'm not sure i even care anymore. I'm a valve fanboi at this point, until Gabe leaves and they go corporate.
1 reply →
It may work out all the same because Apple's attempts such as with Game Porting Toolkit and Metal, boost Valve's attempts with Proton and we may see a convergence where Valve is able to make a majority of Steam games work on Mac without Apple explicitly wanting it.
> Right now Valve is quietly targeting MS' attempt to create a walled garden for gaming on Windows and (probably) cut them out.
Current MS' approach is to not do exclusives and sell all their games on every platform available except Apple's
Yes, that is what I was alluding to.
But, I do think it might actually be a net positive for them on the Mac by expanding the audience of people who might buy a Mac.
Given that full PC-Game-style game sales via the Mac App Store are likely abysmal, at least compared to mobile game revenue, I don’t think they have that much to lose.
> Why would Apple ever invite Valve to potentially do the same to them?
apple on a desktop/laptop is not a primary gaming platform; edge cases, at best
mobile gaming is a different story, but at the end of the day apple is making money off of hardware sales first and foremost, esp. w/r/t laptops and phones.