macOS Catalina 32-bit block is overzealous

[aiusepsi]

As of today's update (2019-10-11) there's a block on playing 32-bit only games, which is described in the update notes as so:

Games that no longer run on MacOS 10.15 Catalina will show an incompatibility warning.

Unfortunately, this feature is massively overzealous. As an illustrative example, the game "Binding of Isaac: Rebirth" which I have installed, and could play on Catalina before this Steam update, now cannot be played because Steam claims that it's incompatible.

The client seems to be relying on developers to explicitly mark their games as 64-bit compatible, and completely disabling their games on Catalina if they don't. This is a really bad user experience; probably worse than trying to play a game and it failing because it's not 32-bit compatible.

Furthermore, games which have been disabled in this way also don't reflect their actual installed status properly; the library UI is acting as if they're not installed, which means you now can't uninstall any of the games which are stuck in this state.

My suggested fix for this would be to instead of have a "64-bit support" flag, make something with three states, "confirmed 64-bit support", "confirmed 32-bit only" and "unknown", and then act accordingly. The "confirmed 64-bit" state would match the behaviour of the "64-bit support" flag currently, a game set to "confirmed 32-bit" would have the current behaviour in the absence of the "64-bit support" flag (with the problem with install state fixed), and unknown could just display a warning that the game may not be compatible, but otherwise match the old behaviour pre this update.

Perhaps the Steam client could crowd-source the operability of "unknown" games in some way; the overlay/steamclient.dylib must know if it's running in a 64-bit process; any non-trivial use of the Steamworks API in a 64-bit process would be proof of 64-bit support.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

I wonder if there is any discussion about this in the Steamworks group?

[aiusepsi]

There's another bug with this feature: games like "Homeworld Remastered Collection" which have a Mac version available, but where the Mac version is no longer listed on the store, aren't blocked off despite being 32-bit only.

Given that I believe the Mac versions of these games are no longer advertised because they don't support 64-bit, it's a bit ironic that they're not blocked, when other games which do support 64-bit are blocked.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

I hope you don't mind me linking this thread a few times or more, already.

I was hoping others would see it since they also are reporting issues.

[wntermute]

Cherry on top: If you manually launch a 64-bit game that's marked as 32-bit in the client, you won't be awarded achievements if you meet the criteria. (Tested on Coloring Pixels: Book 1, Puzzle 10: T-Rex)

[Watermelon {JESUS IS LORD}]

Originally posted by wntermute:

Cherry on top: If you manually launch a 64-bit game that's marked as 32-bit in the client, you won't be awarded achievements if you meet the criteria. (Tested on Coloring Pixels: Book 1, Puzzle 10: T-Rex)

cause you launched the game without steam, so steam doesnt know it was running so you cant earn achieves, no access to steam cloud, etc

[wntermute]

Originally posted by Fatberg {JESUS IS LORD}:

cause you launched the game without steam, so steam doesnt know it was running so you cant earn achieves, no access to steam cloud, etc

Well, that's the only way to launch the game(s) I *legally purchased* with the client in the current state. This has class-action lawsuit written all over it.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by wntermute:

This has class-action lawsuit written all over it.

Read the SSA again.

[danieltonb]

I really hope they fix this before releasing the beta as stable. My games all launch fine in Catalina with the current stable Steam client, but when I tried the beta, only four of my games worked because Steam says the others are not compatible with Catalina (even though they are).

[phermartell]

Euro truck 2 is not working with Catalina

[Espartero]

Napoleon Total War is not working in my 2 years old 27¨ 5K Imac anymore because it says I dont have Catalina. And that´s true. I dont have Catalina. And I won´t have it bacause I don´t want to loose all my properly working 32 bit applications.

The point is that when I bought NTW in june, the game was announced as compatible with my OS. Actually it already is at the product page (haha). And I cannot remember reading anywhere that my game would stop working as soon as the OS would change. So far I want a solution or my money back. This is not fair.

[76561198140997333]

Originally posted by Espartero:

Napoleon Total War is not working in my 2 years old 27¨ 5K Imac anymore because it says I dont have Catalina. And that´s true. I dont have Catalina. And I won´t have it bacause I don´t want to loose all my properly working 32 bit applications.

The point is that when I bought NTW in june, the game was announced as compatible with my OS. Actually it already is at the product page (haha). And I cannot remember reading anywhere that my game would stop working as soon as the OS would change. So far I want a solution or my money back. This is not fair.

You can still play on the older OS's, please see the pinned post in the Napoleon Total War forum "Total War: Napoleon - macOS Support & Patch Info" for more details. https://steamcommunity.com/app/34030/discussions/0/1629665087689724502/

Originally posted by Feral Support:

Players using a version of OS X before 10.15 can access a compatible version of the game via the Beta tab in the game’s properties window. Select the ‘Mac_Retail_1.1 - macOS 10.14.6 or older only' branch for a version that is compatible with 10.9.5 up to 10.14.6.

We offer the older version for people who don't want to upgrade and we have a new optimised version with higher performance, 64bit & Metal support for people who have upgraded.

[Espartero]

Originally posted by FERAL Edwin:

You can still play on the older OS's, please see the pinned post in the Napoleon Total War forum "Total War: Napoleon - macOS Support & Patch Info" for more details. https://steamcommunity.com/app/34030/discussions/0/1629665087689724502/

Originally posted by Feral Support:

Players using a version of OS X before 10.15 can access a compatible version of the game via the Beta tab in the game’s properties window. Select the ‘Mac_Retail_1.1 - macOS 10.14.6 or older only' branch for a version that is compatible with 10.9.5 up to 10.14.6.

We offer the older version for people who don't want to upgrade and we have a new optimised version with higher performance, 64bit & Metal support for people who have upgraded.

Thank you so much Edwin. Actually I was this morning talking to a collegue of yours at Feral and he already gave me that solution. It worked perfectly. THanks again.

[Madd the Sane]

For me, the 32-bit warnings are just wrong, with some 32-bit apps not being marked as such.

[pcles]

In my case, all 32bit apps are indicated as such.

However, some 64bit apps are wrongly tagged as 32bit (Everspace, Witness). A "not working under Catalina" statement is indicated by Steam although those apps work perfectly (and I did the test).

Can this be corrected by the Steam team ?

[Kenai]

Steam is ignoring all feedback on this. I posted an issue over a month ago before this came to release and they've only made it WORSE.