macOS 11 Big Sur support :: Steam for Mac

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Zed Jun 29, 2020 @ 11:46am

macOS 11 Big Sur support

After updating to the beta of macOS 11 Big Sur, it seems Steam does not recognise it is running on macOS, and therefore refuses to run any game. I've tried running Parkitect from within the steamapps folder, and that does work, indicating the problem originates within the Steam client, not individual games. I hope Steam fixes this issue soon, which is why I've decided to bring it to light here. I hope this is the right place to do so.

p.s. Sadly, for many of my other games (Football Manager 2020, Euro Truck Simulator 2, Hearts of Iron IV), this method does not work as it requires starting the game from within Steam. Does anyone know a quick fix to circumvent this problem for these games, or does such a fix not exist?

UPDATE: fixed in the latest beta! Just enrol in Steam's beta program and force update your client, and play buttons will not be greyed out anymore.

Last edited by Zed; Jul 7, 2020 @ 2:19am

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Showing 1-15 of 63 comments

Cathulhu Jun 29, 2020 @ 12:42pm

Well, don't use a OS that is still in development and will be for months before it is even fit for productive use.

Zed Jun 29, 2020 @ 3:24pm

Originally posted by Cathulhu:
Well, don't use a OS that is still in development and will be for months before it is even fit for productive use.

What does this have to do with the issue at hand? It's clearly not an OS problem, but rather a Steam-side issue, as demonstrated by the fact that a game like Parkitect does run. Your comment does not really provide any constructive contribution to the issue.

patilaarsh Jun 29, 2020 @ 3:40pm

Even I have noticed the same behavior. Apparently steam does not recognize the platform as a mac device. Don't worry, steam developers might know about it as they always have to plan for os updates and changes they can do, and obviously we are into only week 1 of Big Sur. Give them time.

Even I use betas for development and bug reporting purposes, it's natural to have these kind of bugs. I still recommend installing a windows on bootcamp, so that you can play your game whenever you want. I play CS GO most of the time, but still I have a windows handy for that.

I don't think there would be any quick bug fixes for it, we will have to wait for steam update. Also, ignore the people who don't provide logical answers because they might not be in your situation, but will still judge you.

Zed Jun 30, 2020 @ 2:13am

Originally posted by patilaarsh:
Even I have noticed the same behavior. Apparently steam does not recognize the platform as a mac device. Don't worry, steam developers might know about it as they always have to plan for os updates and changes they can do, and obviously we are into only week 1 of Big Sur. Give them time.

Even I use betas for development and bug reporting purposes, it's natural to have these kind of bugs. I still recommend installing a windows on bootcamp, so that you can play your game whenever you want. I play CS GO most of the time, but still I have a windows handy for that.

I don't think there would be any quick bug fixes for it, we will have to wait for steam update. Also, ignore the people who don't provide logical answers because they might not be in your situation, but will still judge you.

Thanks for your comment. I just thought there might be a quick, DIY fix for it as it seemed like such a small issue. But I'm sure that perhaps when the public beta comes out, and more people report this issue, Steam will fix the problem as it does not really seem like a difficult fix.

Kenai Jun 30, 2020 @ 11:54am

Originally posted by Zed:
Originally posted by patilaarsh:
Even I have noticed the same behavior. Apparently steam does not recognize the platform as a mac device. Don't worry, steam developers might know about it as they always have to plan for os updates and changes they can do, and obviously we are into only week 1 of Big Sur. Give them time.

Even I use betas for development and bug reporting purposes, it's natural to have these kind of bugs. I still recommend installing a windows on bootcamp, so that you can play your game whenever you want. I play CS GO most of the time, but still I have a windows handy for that.

I don't think there would be any quick bug fixes for it, we will have to wait for steam update. Also, ignore the people who don't provide logical answers because they might not be in your situation, but will still judge you.

Thanks for your comment. I just thought there might be a quick, DIY fix for it as it seemed like such a small issue. But I'm sure that perhaps when the public beta comes out, and more people report this issue, Steam will fix the problem as it does not really seem like a difficult fix.

I've attempted to work around it by setting my OS version to tell steam I was on MacOS catalina, but that doesn't appear to work so unfortunately there may not be a work around.

intrabloom Jun 30, 2020 @ 2:37pm

I've run into the same issues. Make sure to submit back to Feedback Assistant, though. Even though the issue may be Steam-side, we can't ignored Apple's decision to drop 32-bit support. Most likely this is a software compatibility issue with Steam, if on the off-chance it's Apple's, a bunch of feedback sent to Apple might help get something like a hot-fix out.

will_is_here Jun 30, 2020 @ 7:06pm

Originally posted by Intrabloom:
Even though the issue may be Steam-side, we can't ignored Apple's decision to drop 32-bit support.

32 bit was dropped last release (Catalina). This is a new issue.

For what it's worth, 'unsteaming' games that don't use heavy steam dependent DRM by renaming the libsteam_api.dylib to libsteam_api.dylib.bak seems to do the trick.

Zed Jul 1, 2020 @ 3:19am

Originally posted by will_is_here:
Originally posted by Intrabloom:
Even though the issue may be Steam-side, we can't ignored Apple's decision to drop 32-bit support.

32 bit was dropped last release (Catalina). This is a new issue.

For what it's worth, 'unsteaming' games that don't use heavy steam dependent DRM by renaming the libsteam_api.dylib to libsteam_api.dylib.bak seems to do the trick.

I'm not sure I follow. Where is this "libsteam_api.dylib" located? Somewhere in steamapps?

patilaarsh Jul 4, 2020 @ 12:57pm

The issue is not related to 32 bit. This is related to the version number of the operating system.
Steam issued me a hardware survey 2 days ago, which detected my system to be MacOS 10.16 , which is apparently they named it to be forward compatible, untill they officially released the support, but Apple changed the version number for this OS. Which is why steam can't detect the OS as a valid MacOS.
this is the link to that image. Steam detected my OS.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1L4qHG2Xcbf18Cbz-1h7uJaxkX8P2GO-F/view?usp=sharing