The future of Steam on Mac

[Toast-X3]

With the new line of Mac computers dropping the Intel Processors, What will happen with Steam? I know for a couple years there's going to be a way to run Intel Mac Apps on the new Apple Silicon ones, but after that, what would be the point of Steam on mac? For me, the Catalina update destroyed half of my steam library, because of it I now have a seperate Windows machine, but what will happen when Macs go to the new processors? Would any games run on it? Would steam run on it? I'm not a big fan of the new Macs with the processor change, but I'm curious how it would go...

[symonty]

Compatibility was a major point of the whole presentation today and even spoke about games specifically in Rosetta 2.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/06/apple-announces-mac-transition-to-apple-silicon/
You are correct to point out this is not a 100% seemless transition, but as long as Steam is still in development it will migrate to Xcode 12 and thus be able to be compiled in Universal 2, which supports both platforms too.
This transition is going to be messy but the benefit for developers to stick with it , is a big carrot ( you get to be able to run on ios/ipados ) that you will see a good amount of pressure over the next 2 years to move.

[Ogee1D O Retorno ♣]

hh

[rawWwRrr]

Steam will be made to work on Mac. The games, however, will be up to the individual developers to make happen. We see the divide even now when Apple dropped 32-bit support and suddenly the 32-bit Mac compatible games quit working. Unfortunately a lot of people were blaming Steam for that.

[Satoru]

rawWwRrr の投稿を引用：

Steam will be made to work on Mac. The games, however, will be up to the individual developers to make happen. We see the divide even now when Apple dropped 32-bit support and suddenly the 32-bit Mac compatible games quit working. Unfortunately a lot of people were blaming Steam for that.

There's no point in making steam run on a non-intel mac. None of the games you'd install would work anyway. Unless you have the tiny hadnful of games that were converted to Metal by Feral/Aspyr, your gaming library is totally screwed. OpenGL emulation will either not work, or be so slow as to be unusable

Also fun part, when the Mac transition happens, guess what. Your Mac is now officially an iOS walled garden. Guess what Apple absolutely doesn't allow on their walled gardens? Apps that emulate other stores. Steam will never come to the new Mac, because it bypasses all of Apple's iOS 'restrictions'.

Double fun, now that mobile and mac are functionally the 'same thing' people are going to wonder "why am I paying $10 for this game on mac but its only $1 on the iphone? Ill just by the $1 iphone version and play that on my mac!" Full priced games on mac will disappear as devs now can no longer charge the appropraite price, because every Mac user is just going to buy the iOs verion and then whine why games are 'so expensive'

[aiusepsi]

Satoru の投稿を引用：

There's no point in making steam run on a non-intel mac. None of the games you'd install would work anyway. Unless you have the tiny hadnful of games that were converted to Metal by Feral/Aspyr, your gaming library is totally screwed. OpenGL emulation will either not work, or be so slow as to be unusable

1. There's also the games which used Metal from the get-go, or use Vulkan and MoltenVK. Like Valve's own Dota 2 and Underlords. Or any games which use relatively new versions of cross-platform engines like Unreal or Unity.

2. No idea what you're talking about with the phrase "OpenGL emulation". I don't know why there's any reason to believe the OpenGL implementation on ARM macOS won't be as capable as the one on Intel macOS, or the OpenGL ES implementation for iOS, given that OpenGL and OpenGL ES are extremely similar.

Also fun part, when the Mac transition happens, guess what. Your Mac is now officially an iOS walled garden. Guess what Apple absolutely doesn't allow on their walled gardens? Apps that emulate other stores.

The Mac is still running macOS, not iOS. You'll be able to run whatever software you like. See, e.g. 15:15 to about 15:45 in this year's Platforms State of the Union video.

If you have a source which states otherwise, I'd be interested to see it; otherwise I'm going to assume you're just making stuff up, like your initial claim that Apple had killed off OpenGL in ARM macOS.

[Cathulhu]

2. ARM Mac OS X will not have ANY OpenGL support. Apple already said they are dropping OpenGL with ARM and will only support Metal. So, yeah, very relevant.

Mac OS X will only run software that is supported on the architecture of the CPU.
Sure, you can install Windows on an ARM computer, but good luck getting apps to run.
Will be the same if not worse for Mac OS X. Most devs will not port their apps to the ARM architecture and Rosetta 2 is not a solution. Some programs may run, but their performance will clearly suffer. It's an emulator, not a wrapper.
The original Rosetta had severe limitations as well:

Rosetta is part of Mac OS X for Intel operating systems prior to Lion. It translates G3, G4, and AltiVec instructions; however, it does not translate G5 instructions. Therefore, applications that rely on G5-specific instruction sets must be modified by their developers to work on Rosetta-supported Intel-based Macs. According to Apple, applications with heavy user interaction but low computational needs (such as word processors) are well suited to translation via Rosetta, while applications with high computational needs (such as AutoCAD, games, or Adobe Photoshop) are not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(software)

I'm sure there will be similar restrictions with Rosetta 2.
Apple already deprecated OpenGL back in 2018, stopping pretty much all development of it. It's only sensible to kill it off now.
https://venturebeat.com/2018/06/06/apple-defends-end-of-opengl-as-mac-game-developers-threaten-to-leave/
https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/06/28/why-macos-mojave-requires-metal----and-deprecates-opengl

[GrayShirt]

Cathulhu の投稿を引用：

2. ARM Mac OS X will not have ANY OpenGL support. Apple already said they are dropping OpenGL with ARM and will only support Metal. So, yeah, very relevant.

I think it was in the State of Union, but Apple said that while still deprecated, OpenGL is still present on ARM Macs.

[aiusepsi]

Cathulhu の投稿を引用：

2. ARM Mac OS X will not have ANY OpenGL support. Apple already said they are dropping OpenGL with ARM and will only support Metal. So, yeah, very relevant.

Where are you getting that from? From the documentation:

OpenGL is deprecated, but is available on Apple silicon.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/porting_your_macos_apps_to_apple_silicon

As regards your comments on Rosetta 2: they specifically demonstrated a game with Rosetta 2, presumably to show that while it's not ideal, the perf doesn't totally suck. The limitations of the original on which PowerPC instructions were supported obviously doesn't apply. So far, I haven't heard anything about any x86_64 instructions being unsupported.

[GoGoGoober]

Yes yes, lots of incomparably lots of work ahead.

My take, those who don’t evolve get left behind. Look at all other tech giants who didn’t see that writing on the wall. Mac has the ability to say we’re going to ARM f everyone else. But windows also wants to dabble in the power efficiency of arm. If OSX gets enough large software companies to develop software for it, it will make it easier for windows to adopt it in the future.

Steam should be ahead of the curve put software out for it, if possible convert major titles for it, Dota2 TF2 ext. and make it lucrative for others to do so and dominate that section of the market like they do PC. Because otherwise they will have a huge generation of people with Apple Arcade as their only option. + Epic might try it out.

[REEEEEEEEEEEEE!]

Just look at the current situation. Not every game available on Steam runs on Mac. On Apple Silicon the catalog will shrink even further.

[TheDon4299]

TL;DR It's somewhat likely Steam will abandon macOS development, but that does not mean gaming on Mac is outright dead, since ARM Macs can run iOS/iPadOS apps, and some devs are already pumping out decent titles for those platforms. Also, Steam Link and Nvidia GeForce Now are available for Mac.

Apple has never relied heavily on Valve and Steam when it comes to gaming on Mac. They sell games through the Mac App Store, but besides Apple Arcade and some retro ports, there are few AAA games in the store (I saw Tomb Raider and one of the Batman Arkham games last time I checked the App Store).

I have no plans to upgrade from my Intel MacBook, and the vast majority of people who purchase Macs don't expect to be doing any heavy gaming on them. Of the 57 games in my Steam library, 24 support Mac (which is around less than half). Most of Valve's own games do support Mac, but I've heard as of late that they don't run very well. I only have Steam installed on my Mac to play Jackbox, and any other gaming I do on Mac, I use Nvidia GeForce Now to stream the game from the cloud.

With that being said, ARM Macs can run iOS and iPad apps, and there are more AAA games available for both of those platforms than there are in the Mac App Store. Epic ported Fortnite to mobile. Mojang ported Minecraft to mobile. Both these games have crossplay with PC and console. I own games like Civ6 & Ark on iOS. In terms of storytelling games, Telltale made a habit of porting all their games to mobile before Walking Dead S4, and I've seen other titles like Life is Strange and Gone Home on the platform.For strategy games, XCOM and FTL (iPad only) are available.

These games are native to iOS and iPadOS, but the ARM Macs will have the same architecture, and will run these games just fine. Devs are only going to invest more in developing AAA for mobile, and ARM Macs are going to be able to run those games as long as they come for iOS/iPadOS as well.

Let's not forget Steam Link is also available for iOS/iPadOS, so that app will be able to run on Mac as well, and you can stream games from a Windows PC to your Mac if you have one.

I could never see hardcore gaming natively be a thing on Mac, but plenty of devs see the promise in mobile platforms. The vast majority of games that ran on Intel Macs might be difficult to port, and Steam might not be able to make the transition seeing as Valve dropped SteamVR support for Macs some time ago and may be losing interest in Mac development due to a booming PC market. However, in my eyes, Steam, and gaming in general, are far from dead on Mac.

[darkfoxh4k3r]

I know this is old buy boy OH boy were you ever wrong!! runs like a top

Cathulhu の投稿を引用：

2. ARM Mac OS X will not have ANY OpenGL support. Apple already said they are dropping OpenGL with ARM and will only support Metal. So, yeah, very relevant.

Mac OS X will only run software that is supported on the architecture of the CPU.
Sure, you can install Windows on an ARM computer, but good luck getting apps to run.
Will be the same if not worse for Mac OS X. Most devs will not port their apps to the ARM architecture and Rosetta 2 is not a solution. Some programs may run, but their performance will clearly suffer. It's an emulator, not a wrapper.
The original Rosetta had severe limitations as well:

Rosetta is part of Mac OS X for Intel operating systems prior to Lion. It translates G3, G4, and AltiVec instructions; however, it does not translate G5 instructions. Therefore, applications that rely on G5-specific instruction sets must be modified by their developers to work on Rosetta-supported Intel-based Macs. According to Apple, applications with heavy user interaction but low computational needs (such as word processors) are well suited to translation via Rosetta, while applications with high computational needs (such as AutoCAD, games, or Adobe Photoshop) are not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(software)

I'm sure there will be similar restrictions with Rosetta 2.
Apple already deprecated OpenGL back in 2018, stopping pretty much all development of it. It's only sensible to kill it off now.
https://venturebeat.com/2018/06/06/apple-defends-end-of-opengl-as-mac-game-developers-threaten-to-leave/
https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/06/28/why-macos-mojave-requires-metal----and-deprecates-opengl

[pantheon0918]

Toaster Corporation の投稿を引用：

With the new line of Mac computers dropping the Intel Processors, What will happen with Steam? I know for a couple years there's going to be a way to run Intel Mac Apps on the new Apple Silicon ones, but after that, what would be the point of Steam on mac? For me, the Catalina update destroyed half of my steam library, because of it I now have a seperate Windows machine, but what will happen when Macs go to the new processors? Would any games run on it? Would steam run on it? I'm not a big fan of the new Macs with the processor change, but I'm curious how it would go...

Lol steam macOS version don’t even have broadcast feature after 5 years lol

Apple’s management are so useless and incompetent it’s appalling

If I was Senior Vice President in charge of Hardware Engineering + Hardware Technologies instead of that lame ass Dan Riccio,
I would have throw out billions to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ acquire steam and to develope a gaming controller better than Xbox elite 2 ( and also to piss of all those Microsoft fanboy by acquiring steam )

Lol and thanks to people like Craig Federighi
Senior Vice President in charge of Software Engineering, the gaming experience is pathetic on macOS !

Apple should fire all these useless people taking billions of salary doing nothing , instead they should merge the hardware development & engineering into a single division and put more resource on gaming industry ( like Microsoft acquiring besthae for 80 billions $