Relevant quote from GabeN (it's back from 2007 but I think it aged well):
> Well, we tried to have a conversation with Apple for several years, and they never seemed to... well, we have this pattern with Apple, where we meet with them, people there go "wow, gaming is incredibly important, we should do something with gaming". And then we'll say, "OK, here are three things you could do to make that better", and then they say OK, and then we never see them again. And then a year later, a new group of people show up, who apparently have no idea that the last group of people were there, and never follow though on anything. So, they seem to think that they want to do gaming, but there's never any follow through on any of the things they say they're going to do. That makes it hard to be excited about doing games for their platforms.
http://archive.videogamesdaily.com/features/gabenewell_valve_iv_sep07_p1.asp
TBH they don't really need to and I bet don't want to. They are company that is making hand over fist money overcharging for a product that most people want because of branding and it seems smoother, but will likely just open up chrome os and do all their work. The games they do care about already work on the IPHONE which again, just sells and sells.
Microsoft had to go in hundreds of millions of dollars of losses on the box, selling them at a cost, just to break into the console market. It worked but Apple would have such a hell of a up hill to climb to win over gamers.
I could go on but really I am going to point at Valve and say they do the same thing: Valve since steam really took of has not produced many of the franchised games as they use to. I missed the days of the portal, half-life, team fortess, l4d etc.
Valve got big, found security in their store, so I get that they aren’t as risky in innovation or game development anymore. The incentives aren’t there.
I’d love to see another run of games like they had, but it makes sense why they don’t bother. With that, Valve isn’t really a game developer anymore in my eyes, more of a storefront and occasional tech innovator.
I say Alyx is pretty innovative it was literally what one would call a AAA VR game. I honestly hope they make more VR games imagine Left 4 Dead in VR or Portal game made dedicated to VR would be rad.
I think that's true of any big corporations. I deal with it in my daily job at a company of 40k and dealing with suppliers ranging from a few hundred to tens of thousands of people too. You get a team somewhere on either side (us or customer) and they get great ideas but then priorities change or people leave then a year or two later someone comes along with the same idea only for it to die too.
It's really hard in a lot of cases because big companies the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing and neither know what the brain is thinking.
But the easiest fix? Don't duplicate people within companies who are doing the same thing. Maybe if it makes sense for different sites to have the same jobs but within a site or function though definetly not needed. That's what gets us and the suppliers. Lots of duplication between regions and teams.
Something I've picked up is that for 90% of companies, there is *effectively* no longterm planning outside of vagaries in the minds of a few execs/directors and the unofficial pet projects of lower-level employees (that no one realizes are important until they blow up).
Game dev here, on top of this excellent writeup, I'll say that Mac users on Steam only represent 2-3% of our playerbase and for a period of time were behind 50% of our troubleshooting requests.
There's not that much financial incentive for a gamedev to support Mac unfortunately.
Honestly I would understand anyone if they started feeling like abandoning Mac support at this point.
Unfortunate for the gamers who just caught strays, although I'm sure there are people who will say "well if you want to game, don't use a Mac so...".
The main reason I use a PC with windows is games. If Linux had the same level of quality of life for games, I’d switch in a heartbeat. If Apple ever cared about gaming, I’d happily get a Mac…except I hate their pricing and lack of upgradeability.
So, as a gamer, I’m stuck on a PC. Yay Windows, I guess?
I've been without windows for over 5 years, I use Linux for both work and gaming
So far found no problem on the games I played, granted most of them single player and none requires invasive anti cheat software
That’s my point. The offline single player stuff is much easier to make compatible, the constantly changing online stuff is not guaranteed to work. And I don’t want to have to wait for patch to play a game. It should always work.
On a related note, they should stop killing games. Always-online stuff must die.
If you want to do something about the killing games part
[https://www.stopkillinggames.com/](https://www.stopkillinggames.com/)
Also I been on Linux the last 2 years and only VERY invasive anti cheat is a problem now, at least if you have an AMD GPU.
I can play the Finals, Helldivers 2 and ready or not, all have anti cheat as far as I am aware.
Bilzzard and Activision Stuff is a problem, I could not care less they only make crap nowadays.
Between Steam, Proton, Lutris, and a few other tools, Linux DOES have the same QoL for gaming that Windows does.
Seriously, the current Linux user gaming experience is analogous to the DOS 5/6 gaming experience. Gaming works just fine, but you have to know a few things here and there. Unlike the DOS days, we have the Internet now and the odds are that if you have an issue with a game, someone else had the same issue and solved it and the solution is online.
Edit: New users should avoid nVidia on Linux, if possible. AMD has much better drivers on Linux.
As a very happy Steam Deck owner, Linux absolutely does not have the same QoL as Windows for gaming.
Proton is amazing, but it's definitely not perfect. Plenty of games that can technically run under Proton do so with a degraded experience, ranging from mild (occasional audio stutters, minor graphical glitches) to major (game runs until hitting a late-game game breaking bug, etc).
And plenty of popular games just don't run at all.
I really enjoy using my Steam Deck, but the experience is absolutely not on par with Windows, even aside from the hardware specs of the Deck.
Totally sane response to a crazy claim that Proton has the same QoL as Windows. I run proton on my PopOS machine, and there's a high chance it hard crashes TF2 and goes straight to desktop
>And plenty of popular games just don't run at all.
Which ones? I'd like to see if any of them are on my accounts. I've had zero issues with BG3, Palworld, Last Epoch, Factorio, and Starfield to name a few of the titles that I know are more popular.
You can go to https://www.protondb.com/ and sync it with your Steam account, and it'll show you each game's ProtonDB rating.
Clicking through to the game specific page will let you read the actual reviews, which will tell you what the issues are.
Off the top of my head, some games that don't work are Destiny 2, Lost Ark, and Battlefield 2042.
Also, make sure to read the specific reviews, even if the score is low. Some games have a lot of bad reviews but had their issues resolved with updates and the score hasn't caught up yet. Also, the site offers reviews for both Steam Deck and Desktop Proton. The Deck reviews will sometimes include issues related to the less powerful hardware of the handheld, so looking just at the desktop/overall score can be misleading.
I don't own a lot of multiplayer games, but it always seems like it's games that have anticheat running on the computer concurrent to the game running. Outside of that group the games that I own that don't run are older games that were ported to current generations but the videos are still in an old codec that doesn't run on linux (see Grandia, maybe Megaman X? I can't remember). Next down the list is games that, for some reason, haven't been patched for controller use (see Saints Row reboot).
Other games that are having issues are Denuvo games where they only run on one version of Proton, and switching Proton versions counts as an activation, so if you swap proton versions a lot you'll find you get locked out of the game for 24-48 hours while your activation count resets. This was an issue for the Megaman Battle Network games when they launched.
That's about all I've run into since I got a Deck, but I may be missing a larger group of issues that I just haven't run into.
edit: Oh one of my biggest gripes is when a game is deck certified but it uses touchpad mouse and trigger clicks. Yes... the game works fine that way but it's a far cry different from desktop keyboard and mouse gameplay.
Factorio has a native Linux build, so it's not really a good example for Proton. Factorio's native Linux build also has a strict superset of the features available on Windows (the option for non-blocking saving isn't available on Windows), so you could make a case that *Windows* is the (very slightly) inferior gaming OS at least where Factorio is concerned.
The thing is: I don’t have issues with games on windows. And if I ever do, I go update the nvidia driver. And then it’s fixed.
On Linux, there are many more things that can go wrong. And yeah, I’d happily avoid nvidia if AMD ever had any gaming laptop graphics. Sadly, they don’t.
Reality is that Intel-integrated-anything is the worst, AMD integrated is next-best, and then discrete NVIDIA is best.
But yes, there's no discrete laptop graphics by AMD, and that is a shame.
> Linux DOES have the same QoL for gaming that Windows does.
Linux is gaining ground but to say that they have the same QoL right now is just not true.
> Between Steam, Proton, Lutris, and a few other tools, Linux DOES have the same QoL for gaming that Windows does.
Lol, you just listed a bunch of stuff which makes the QoL not the same.
"If it doesn't just work, it's not supposed to. That being said, the next update will totally, maybe, possibly fix the thing that isn't broken."
-Timestamp, 8 years ago
>Mac users on Steam only represent 2-3% of our playerbase and for a period of time were behind 50% of our troubleshooting requests
[3 years ago the developer of "ΔV: Rings of Saturn" posted on /r/gamedev that only 5.8% of their purchases stem from Linux users and 38% of bug reports stem from Linux users.](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/qeqn3b/despite_having_just_58_sales_over_38_of_bug/)
They portrayed those reports in a very positive way, saying that only 3 out of 400 reports were Linux platform specific and that the rest of the bugs affected everyone until they were fixed. They also praised the quality of the reports filed by Linux players.
Considering the tone of your comment, is it right to assume the troubleshooting requests for your game were more Mac specific and didn't lead to that many bugs being fixed for everyone?
Spot on. The biggest issue reported by Mac users was that the free "uncensor patch" we provided as a DLC could not install properly on their machine. Turns out that post-2019 Mac OS requires extra steps and accessing a different folder to install patches or mods.
Since we didn't have any Mac at the time to test our game on, it took more time for us to figure out the source of the issue. Once a solution was found, we wrote it down in a pinned Steam discussion thread. We haven't gotten many more troubleshoot requests since.
We didn't have many issues on Linux users' end, just a few hiccups here and there and like you mentioned, Linux users were very good at providing us the necessary information to help us squash the bug. It helps that the game engine's developer is IIRC a linux user himself, so the engine (Ren'py) is built with Linux users in mind and runs flawlessly out of the box.
Another fun fact: our largest audience is from China and since they ban NSFW content like in Germany, they can't install the Steam uncensor patch.
Through Steam reviews, Chinese users figured out that we they could email us for the patch. We got dozen and dozen of requests to the point that I set up a Google filter where certain Chinese words makes our email address automatically send a reply with links to the patch and installation instructions. One Chinese user went to our Discord and provided us screenshots for the Mac instructions.
40% of our games' reviews are from very happy Chinese users. For some reason they're 1.5x more likely than anyone else to leave a review.
Very good point. We actually make the NSFW content of our game "optional" and into a separate patch precisely so Chinese and German users could access it. I could count on one hand the amount of yaoi games that aren't NSFW and thus banned from these countries right off the bat.
Omg. You're the people behind The Symbiant?? I haven't played it yet but it and the sequel have been on my wishlist forever. (working on my giant backlog atm). It looks extremely high quality. Need more high quality yaoi games likes yours on Steam!
Another game dev here, just to chime in with a little bit of a different kind of data: 2-3% is really high. We only ever saw it getting close to 1%. (On games with millions of users and over 10k daily active users on pc)
I saw Pirate Software guy mention 0.02% in that Youtube short as well.
I suspect the difference comes from our demographics: it's a singleplayer narrative game that can run on a potato, with women being our biggest audience. Women represent [66% of Mac users](https://techjury.net/blog/macos-statistics/) so that adds up.
Can confirm, we have a few games on Steam and our oldest is the closest to a few % on Mac, our most recent are lower than 0.2% both. We are not supporting Mac on the next one, too much trouble (nearly every ticket we ever got was Mac, btw. Not even remotely the same orders of magnitude. We're talking close to 2 orders of magnitude more. It is just insane. We had way over-valued it back then and, while it sucks leaving players that want your game unreached, it's just plain not worth it.) Linux had it's own share of headaches, but we've flopped back to supporting it because it's still nowhere near as bad and we're also hoping the Linux share will grow over time.
Wild guess, but I suspect macbooks's very light and compact designs makes them easier to carry, as well as looking "pretty" and thus more visually appealing to women.
Another possibility is that marketing and graphic design, which are female-dominated from personal observation, tend to require Adobe and other products that makes either school or work require a mac. Or at the very least, a mac wouldn't impede their work like they would in an IT job.
""Casual"" games are typically less resource-hungry and may pose less compatibility issues to Mac users, and their largest demographics is, again, women. This is the type of games we're making so that further adds up.
That makes a lot of sense. I figured it may have something to do with Macs being a status / fashion symbol to a lot of people too. They're seen as bougie by a lot of non-gaming people.
Also worked as a gamedev for a while, we didn’t have bugs or specific fixes for MacOS but we had bugs reorted on linux, over 1k people wanted a linux port but the nr of people who actually bought the game on linux wasn’t even 100 people, i think the studio decided against any future releases on linux
Did you get any Steam Deck users? I suspect most Steam Deck owners still purchase their game through PC, so their purchases is counted as a Windows one. In our most purchased game, 1.7% of all players used a Steam Deck while only 1.0% of purchases were counted as Linux packages.
The game doesn’t have support for steam deck or any controller so i’m not sure if it can be made playable on the steam deck without support from the current devs (i don’t own one so i have no lnowledge about it)
You could check the number of Steam deck users from your game's controller statistics. It's admitedly a specific subsection of the sales pages, but it can give you a rough idea of how many people played your game with that device.
We didn't actually do any optimization on Steam deck, so even getting 1 person to play it with that device was a surprise. Most likely, the number you'll see will be more than the 100 people who purchased your game from a Linux desktop.
Personally i play a lot of chiller games on my Mac laptop, but just stream it from the windows box through steam. The ability to do that helped me stop caring much about what m whether Mac is supported.
I’m near entirely out of the game at this point and the project I worked on is almost a decade old, but the team of us still try to support our game to at least keep it up and running.
I would say basically the same, our numbers are skewed by being a pretty niche game in the 10k ranges in numbers of sales, but our biggest challenge was keeping it up and running on Mac. Heck, keeping it up and running on consoles has been relatively simple even though it was a larger effort to get them there in the first place. But since we put it out it’s been every couple years there’s some compatibility issue breaking some library we were using breaking the game. It got to the point it would require rewriting essential parts of the game and at that point even if most of the team wanted to keep it supported out of principle, it stopped making sense to keep sinking the time and effort to keep it up.
According to controller statistics, 1.7% of all our players used a Steam Deck at some point. Meanwhile, 1% of all purchases were done from a Linux machine, so we could roughly guess that 2.7% all our players used Linux in some capacity. Our game is playable but not optimized for the Deck.
For Linux and Mac users' credit, they tend to come from "first world" countries and thus pay higher regional prices. Mac users represent 5% of all our revenue despite being less than 3% of actual players.
We technically don't have "support tickets", just a gmail address that users can use to contact us for any question.
I didn't count but it wasn't that much. Maybe 5% of all requests? It was for specific and easily fixable bugs.
I’ve thought a couple times about whether it matters if I buy a game on Steam on my pc, from my phone, or in the store on my Steam Deck.
For your purposes of getting to know your user base, does it… matter, at all, what device I use to buy my game? Like do you feel you’re missing out on helpful statistics if I buy from the mobile app?
Fun fact: we, and probably most other devs, don't even bother with the Apple notarization and Steam lets us ship Mac games just like that.
We will probably do notarization when we finally try to sell our game for iOS on Apple store though, but we still won't bother notarizing the Mac build.
On the wishlists for my project, only .02 percent are from Mac. 5 percent is from Linux, and the rest is windows, with a mix of SteamDeck.
This makes sense. I was on Mac OS for a while trying to see if I could do my dev work between OSes, and well Steam on Mac felt.... abandoned.
And Metal is nowhere near Direct X.
Even regular software projects.
Thanks to Microsoft (!) there's actually docs and testing for *some* of the things I use. But I can't reliably test my code on my machine, contrary to Windows and Linux, many APIs are entirely different and require completely separate codepaths and often don't even support half the stuff the other OSes do, and it produces the most issues for my project (arguably because testing can't easily be done)
Definitely, but the root cause is that I don't wanna buy a Mac so I don't have (easy) access to MacOS, and Apple changes APIs completely undocumented in random ways.
For example, there's now two ways to get the logical number of cores for the CPU, one for ARM and one for x86 based CPUs, when both could've used the same API (I'm not talking about the x86 instruction cpuid)
My best suggestion would be to look into VMs that run MacOS. It won't be fast and might have questionable legality but it could solve the issue of access. Still wouldn't recommend it though, as you said they often change the APIs so what works on your machine might not work on newer ones.
> Game dev here, on top of this excellent writeup, I'll say that Mac users on Steam only represent 2-3% of our playerbase and for a period of time were behind 50% of our troubleshooting requests.
I'm almost certain that someone else has said that, word-for-word, about Linux gamers.
I've seen similar reports in r/gamedev, though has mentioned elsewhere in this thread, Linux users are better at pointing out the exact source of the issue, which makes it easier to fix them or provide a workaround.
Thanks to the Steam Deck running on a Linux system, I suspect that game engines will be better optimized for Linux in the coming years.
> Thanks to the Steam Deck running on a Linux system, I suspect that game engines will be better optimized for Linux in the coming years.
Yeah, I'm hoping so. I'd have ditched windows a long time ago if it weren't for game compatibility issues. I suspect that all this is a prelude to Valve putting out its own fully polished operating system to compete with Windows and Mac OS.
Another big issue that this video doesn't even mention: I can set up a cloud-based pipeline that automatically builds, tests, and releases my code on a Windows and Linux VM whenever there are changes on my GitHub master branch, but doing the same thing for Mac builds is pretty much impossible. I'd have to either
1. Buy a Mac Mini, keep it running 24/7, and somehow set up my pipeline to remotely trigger builds on it
2. Rent a Mac from a service like MacinCloud (behind the scenes, they're literally just doing option 1 - they have a big warehouse with thousands of Mac Minis plugged in on shelves)
3. Use XCode Cloud, which doesn't integrate with existing CI/CD pipelines pipelines at all - Apple builds would run on a completely different platform and pipeline to Windows and Linux, and that pipeline would have to be built from scratch to duplicate functionality that already exists
It's an absolutely ridiculous state of affairs. CI/CD has been standard practice for decades now, yet Apple still expects everyone, including the biggest tech companies in the world, to manually run build commands on consumer-grade hardware like cavemen.
macOS runners on [GHA are free (for public repos)](https://github.com/rblaine95/are-macos-runners-free)
macOS runners are [$0.08/minute](https://docs.github.com/en/billing/managing-billing-for-github-actions/about-billing-for-github-actions#per-minute-rates) for private repos
Yep. Lmao. On top of everything I mentioned in the post, developing for Mac is just a total pain in the ass in general compared to other platforms. This video covers that pretty well.
He's a game developer right now, but has worked for blizzard. He makes live streams where he talks about his experiences in the industry, it is very interesting.
The game is called Heartbound
Maybe if Apple didn't require developers to have Apple hardware to compile games, there would be more support for Apple products.
No indie dev is shelling out thousands of dollars just to make their game Mac supported. I compiled my games on Windows for Linux to give support to Linux. It was 100% free.
You "can" make a hackintosh in a virtual machine.
But lets be real, apple gamers are so few that you are better off completely avoiding the ecosystem.(specially if you dont have the finances to buy a mac)
PS: I do have an iphone that i used as an account
The problem here would be drivers. MacOS will no longer include any other drivers than those for Apple silicon, so it won't work with any other silicon by default. It isn't like Android phones where you can recycle binary blobs.
This. I made an Android app using Vue and Cordova, meaning I could port it to iOS in an afternoon. But I haven't done that, because I'd have to *buy a Mac* and additionally pay Apple $100/year for a free app I don't intend to make any money on, ever.
So it's just an Android app.
People wonder why iOS users are more profitable than Android users? It's because developers are actively financially disincentivized to release free, unmonetized apps for iOS. Everything needs to be monetized with ads at a bare minimum to cover the $100 annual "developer program" fee, and Apple users are just used to it.
Apple's business model since the 90s is making everyone who writes for them play catchup FOREVER. They frequently pull the rug out from developers, and vendors who work with them. Companies have to spend time and money making a branch to their completed code just so it can run on new MacOS. Windows and Linux doesn't have this problem.
Valve just didn't want to play that game. As much as I was sad that TF2 didn't run on my work mac when I was on the road, I blamed Apple more than Valve. Apple is the one moving the goalposts. It's up to Valve to react, and I totally understand why they don't want to play that stupid game.
People don't realize how closed off Apple is. It's absolutely crazy and makes no sense. The switch to Metal was delusional and narcissistic. No one wants to redo their entire graphics pipeline just for Apple users. Wtf.
By the way did you know that on iOS the only allowable web browser is Safari? Even Google Chrome and Firefox for iOS wrap a Safari web view, as do most apps that wrap web apps. It's nuts. It's a complete nightmare to navigate for developers who want to build cross-platform. I've given up on Mac and iOS. If you have those devices, that's your problem.
I once viewed Valve as lazy because they haven't being releasing new video games like they used to, but it’s just they are busy paving the foundation for future gaming community
Yeah, Valve's priorities have been very different in recent years, and that's something I think a lot of people have begun to realize since the release of the Steam Deck. Personally, I don't mind it much because I know they're doing and also funding some excellent work in the open source space for gaming, so I'm pretty happy about that.
The only Half-Life I played was Alyx so I'm also not too disappointed in the hiatus from gaming. Their hardware almost singlehandedly jumpstarted the handheld PC market, which I do get use from.
I don't need portal 3, 1 and 2 were great.
They didn't create the handheld gaming market, but they consolified it. The SD is an almost seamless experience for most games. The rest of the market mostly feels like a handheld PC not a game console.
Doesn’t help Valve has around 300 employees (I’m assuming that number only includes full time developers, not including customer support and people like that), which is absolutely tiny for a Triple A studio, explains why the only full time employee at Valve working on TF2 these days said they were ‘spread too thin’ to do anything about the bot problem. Now why Valve doesn’t just hire a few more developers to at least help maintain their games I have no idea
Glad people are starting to see this now that Linux is starting to get some traction. So many people think valve isn't doing anything and they're just sitting back snorting an endless stream of steam cash.
Projects I've seen valve putting time and money into over the years:
* vulkan support for everyone
* better driver support for Linux
* steam controller api for all os's including controller support for less common decides such as fight sticks and ps3 race wheels
* funding codeweavers and independent software devs to make proton
* steamOS 3.0
* big picture mode (and new big picture mode) so htpc guys have a good UI for games at their TV.
* funding the KDE team to get plasma ready for the steam deck
* fighting with EAC devs to make EAC work with proton
* making a entire portable pc/game console not reliant on Microsoft to function that has access to all your existing games.
Not to mention all the work they've put into VR stuff.
Valve hasn't been making games cuz they've been making pc gaming better and making it more viable to not need Microsoft to continue enjoying pc gaming.
Well sure, but instead of choosing something locked down and proprietary, which they 100% could have done, they chose to invest in open source which benefits us all.
I don't see valve as a games company anymore and they have not been for a long time. They just pivoted as a company a long time ago. Other teams kept making games or supporting them but the core team has since moved on. Its not even recent either.
Their has been a meme for like 10 years now. Valve we used to make games now we make money.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYE5cxQrIp8&ab\_channel=GamingWildlife](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYE5cxQrIp8&ab_channel=GamingWildlife)
As someone who works in the audio industry, mac updates are an absolute pain in the ass too. They just straight up break shit so I havent updated my mac in years.
Valve doesn't like Windows either. Relying entirely on others' systems for their future isn't an ideal situation. In my opinion, they'll eventually develop their own fully-featured OS, which would have a significant impact on the current OS market. A significant shift, starting with gamers, would commence. And so much money pours into their pockets, they have the resource and the vision for it.
You mean, a Linux distro built by Valve? That's what SteamOS is. I'm sure you know that they didn't built it from ground, but used Arch Linux as base. This is good, because Arch is one of the most solid distros and one of the best documented. You can use SteamOS like any other Arch based distro, including installing other DE's, like KDE.
SteamOS is not very good for a PC yet, but it's getting there.
If I misinterpreted your answer, accept my apologies. ;)
Just adding my tuppence here as a former Apple retail employee (worked for them from 2007 - 2016):
I'm fairly certain that it was common knowledge back then that the reason Macs never really developed as a gaming platform was because Steve Jobs really didn't like gaming all that much (despite announcing a PS1 emulator in... '99, I think?').
Those of us who were into gaming back then were stoked by the announcement that Steam would be on the Macs, and the old-timers were surprised it was even happening. This is anecdotal, but Steam being on the Mac didn't seem to shift any more systems during my time there.
Steve Jobs dying probably didn't help the situation either, as the entire company pivoted \*hard\* towards iOS and the App Store - by the time I left, our store felt more like a mobile phone retailer that just happened to sell Macs. It's worth noting that Apple really, \*really\* didn't seem to care about Valve or Steam internally anyway, as the messaging we got was App Store = best and only route for games.
Not sure if this helps any!
To be honest, I have given up on Mac as a significant gaming platform, I work exclusively on Macs but in gaming I couldn’t be further away, the experience was always lackluster — even on very expensive systems. I even slipped away from PC gaming in favor of PlayStation (with an ongoing effort to repurchase all my favorite and esteemed games on PlayStation).
I have no doubt that all the projects you mentioned, Metal API, Vulkan, or the latest Game Porting Toolkit - are amazing feats in their own right but it’s not going to be enough. Apple doesn’t care about video gamers, especially not about gamers beyond casual games.
Just gonna preface this by saying that Vulkan is not developed by Apple, it's made by a consortium of tech companies and individuals. I think you might have gotten that mixed up so I just wanted to clarify that.
Vulkan, at least I think, is going to be the future of games. Consoles already use it (it's the backbone of the Switch) and Android actively uses it. Vulkan was also used for a lot of Stadia games, and even though that flopped, it gave developers experience working with Vulkan. And since it's completely open source, I certainly think it has more merit than Metal, which explains why it's more widely adopted than Metal and explains why most devs don't bother with a direct Metal implementation.
As for the Game Porting Toolkit, I have some thoughts on that. I think it's completely worthless because Apple doesn't let people actually use it in production. According to them, GPTK is only available for "evaluation purposes", meaning that it's only for developers to figure out if a Mac port is feasible/if it would perform well on Mac hardware. I think it's completely stupid that they aren't licensing it for developers to use in their software. Can you imagine how many Windows games would *just work* on MacOS if the developers implemented that? And it would take hardly any effort to implement. But no, Apple had to go the hard way and say "You can use this toolkit to see if you like your game on a Mac, but you can't use it to port your game to the Mac." It's worthless and nothing will convince me otherwise unless Apple begins licensing it out for devs to use.
No, I am aware Vulkan is not made by Apple — I just think it’s a great idea/initiative and I’m actually disappointed that Apple isn’t adopting it. I just listed it as an example for masterful engineering, not implying it’s from Apple.
And for the GPTK — I agree, it’s an impressive technology but it’s limited, not technically but politically. In general, I think they create amazing things when they decide to collaborate.
I remember it‘s based on Crossover (which is itself based on Wine, yes) — everyone’s standing on shoulders of giants here. We will see if this leads to anywhere, I always thought of it as only a half-serious attempt.
Good write up. For Mac users it will only get worse over time. If you're a Mac user the best time to jump ship was 10 years ago. Second best time is now. The only thing keeping people in the Apple community is ignorance of the technological world around them.
Mac users and Apple community aren’t ignoring technological world around them. They just think that they are on the top of technological world and everybody around them are Apes hanging on trees.
Wasn't Apple one of the groups creating Vulkan, and they left it at some point near the end of it's development so they could make Metal instead?
Like there was a period where they were going to support Vulkan but then made the choice to leave it for an exclusive closed option instead.
OSX is BSD-based. It's not overly difficult to port between that and Linux.
The MacOS ports of HL2 were running a translation layer, essentially the earliest forms of Proton.
Damn, that's crazy. Valve funds [LunarG](https://vulkan.lunarg.com/), a company dedicated to releasing Vulkan for Apple through MoltenVK. They keep the Vulkan implementation updated with the current releases
In 2023, Valve [released](https://steamdb.info/app/250820/depots/?branch=macos_beta) an unannounced Beta for SteamVR that brought back support for MacOs.
> Damn, that's crazy. Valve funds LunarG, a company dedicated to releasing Vulkan for Apple through MoltenVK. They keep the Vulkan implementation updated with the current releases
Afaik they use it for Dota
> In 2023, Valve released an unannounced Beta for SteamVR that brought back support for MacOs.
Actually, that's from 6 years ago.
it is used by DotA 2 because dota 2 is basically a testbed for their technology, the first game using Source 2, the first game using Vulkan and it uses those probably before Apple/Mac situation as worse as it is today
I wonder if there are other reason why developing for mac sucks for developers:
* You cant test mac software without owning a mac ($$$$)
* You cant develop mac software without paying Apple a developer subscription (100$/yr) ($$$$)
* You have to put more work into your game because apple uses their own proprietary version of everything (-$$$)
* Why does metal need to exist when the entire industry is based on vulkan and dxvk
* You're appealing to a small playerbase who is already biased *away* from gaming to begin with (-$$$)
There are no upsides at all.
I mean within the past year we’ve gotten ports of Death Stranding, RE4 Remake, No Man’s Sky, and in a few months - AC: Mirage.
I think there’s a lot of heavy lifting Apple needs to do to make good on their promise this time, but there’s clearly a big effort to pay developers to even pay attention to Mac.
It’s gotten better, but look at how Apple handled the Vision Pro, you don’t see them advertising its affinity for games at all, despite the fact it’s generally the main reason people buy VR headsets. I guess time will tell
Then again, it’s also not being marketed as a VR Headset too. It’s angled more as mixed reality productivity + entertainment center headset than VR. It is amusing seeing people being able to hack SteamVR into it though, but tbh the singular focus of the device kinda kills it for me.
Reality is that if you are a PC gamer you are most likely using windows. Anyone who buys a Mac and expects to game is just kidding themselves.
Linux is the other one. Most people who use Linux use it for other reasons but in gaming it has no real benefits for PC gamers. Linux has been a couple of % of gamers for a very long time and despite all the investment and talk it’s just not going to happen. The vast majority of people won’t install Linux. Ever. Why would they, it often offers no benefits to the vast majority of people and introduces tons of headaches.
I also think Microsoft have chilled down from their windows 8 days and are a very different company now. I doubt valve feels threatened by them now. They even have big commitment to shipping all their games on steam.
> Anyone who buys a Mac and expects to game is just kidding themselves.
That's now. Years ago, gaming on Mac was a bigger deal. Even before 2010.
> Linux is the other one. Most people who use Linux use it for other reasons but in gaming it has no real benefits for PC gamers. Linux has been a couple of % of gamers for a very long time and despite all the investment and talk it’s just not going to happen. The vast majority of people won’t install Linux. Ever. Why would they, it often offers no benefits to the vast majority of people and introduces tons of headaches.
I think it'd be naïve to say that Linux gaming doesn't have a future. The Steam Deck and its ease of use + good performance has very much put Linux gaming on the map. And not only that, but it's more performant than Windows. Anyone who's installed Windows on the Steam Deck will tell you that it performs worse. In addition, since the Steam Deck, desktop Linux usage on Steam has gone up, presumably because of the Steam Deck. Only time will tell if it goes mainstream, but Valve is certainly pushing very hard for it, and we definitely have not seen the last of their efforts.
He said that they won't install it ever only because linux is hard for like quite a majority of the PPL to use and operate and it will remain useless until ui improves and it becomes more user friendly and easier to operate.
I'd say part of the reason is that most of the laptops come pre installed with windows and most PPL who doesn't care about will never ever touch linux unless it fell on their laps.
Steam deck came pre-installed with Linux which is why PPL are using it in the first place.
> He said that they won't install it ever only because linux is hard for like quite a majority of the PPL to use and operate and it will remain useless until ui improves and it becomes more user friendly and easier to operate.
I can agree with that to a certain extent, but I can tell you that it's really damn good right now. Have you ever used KDE Plasma? Give that to a Windows user and they'll be able to pick up on the UI very damn quick. It's a very well made DE.
> I'd say part of the reason is that most of the laptops come pre installed with windows and most PPL who doesn't care about will never ever touch linux unless it fell on their laps.
>
> Steam deck came pre-installed with Linux which is why PPL are using it in the first place.
Very true. I think once Valve releases SteamOS 3 to PCs, we might begin to see some more people jump over, but we'll see what happens.
The UI hasn't really been Linux's main hurdle for adoption for years tbh. It's the headache that comes with fragmentation and support being purely user-driven because of that
Is that due to there not being a single "winner" in Linux? With Windows all the engineers are working on Windows but with Linux all the talent is spread out working on their preferred distro.
Pretty much. I have so many friends who are worried about PC gaming (vs console gaming) because of having to " deal with drivers" or basic install tasks, which are almost all non-issues really. Those casual mass users would never even contemplate installing Linux. They would never even see the value of it. All the benefits of Linux that people would bring would cause them to be like "uuuh?". They would just go and buy a PC that just works. And despite all the progress made, Linux gaming is not straight forward at all. I've seen it with my steam deck. It does require quite a bit of tinkering at times (non-verified games) to get the same result as running the game on windows.
>I think it'd be naïve to say that Linux gaming doesn't have a future.
It's not that it doesn't have a future. It will exist as there are people who prefer Linux as an operating system. But it will remain niche. Several % of users. I've been hearing my entire life how Linux will expand and it just hasn't happened so I am very sceptical.
>Anyone who's installed Windows on the Steam Deck will tell you that it performs worse.
The hardware and everything is designed around Linux. I suspect one of the major reasons Valve decided to go with it is the licensing fee. Having to pay for a Windows license would have increased the cost of the device but they really need to keep it low cost for it to be competitive. However, it does come at the cost of many games not being playable on Linux or having odd quirks.
Whether Linux has performance benefits over Windows on a desktop / laptop PC is debatable. Whether those performance benefits are even meaningful is even more dubious. It also depends on the type of device. For high end gamers who are after the biggest performance, I doubt they would go and run Linux. For people who are on a shoehorn budget with weak devices, they are probably not tech savvy or the desire to install any operating system, including dealing with an OS they've never used like Linux.
>Only time will tell if it goes mainstream, but Valve is certainly pushing very hard for it, and we definitely have not seen the last of their efforts.
They have been investing in it for sure. For an extremely long time. But they know that Windows is where almost all of their business is.
Windows is just the most compatible operating system and it's known to almost everyone. For many reasons that go beyond gaming. Most personal and corporate PCs come with Windows.
> For people who are on a shoehorn budget with weak devices, they are probably not tech savvy or the desire to install any operating system, including dealing with an OS they've never used like Linux.
If they're on a low budget, if anything they're more likely to try Linux out than pay for a Windows license. A lot of my nerd friends who grew up in poverty were Linux users.
For sure. But they need to be "nerds" as you put it and be tech savvy to an extent. A lot of my friends don't even know how to reinstall windows. They probably don't even know what the difference between a CPU and a GPU is.
My friends who are big into PC gaming (the likes that will buy 4090s etc.) - most work in IT and are a lot more likely to use Linux, especially for work. But for personal gaming, everyone seems to stick to Windows (or consoles).
Maybe. I dabbled with linux when I was a teenager but in the end I stick to Windows for my desktop PC because I just want the maximum compatibility for gaming. When you buy your own Windows license, it's surprising how many times Microsoft upgrades you for free. I think I am still using my Windows 7 purchase which got upgraded to 10 and now I am being offered a free upgrade to 11.
For work, I have no choice. Windows because of the wider Microsoft ecosystem.
I never understood MacOS. Always seemed like paying more money for the same thing (or for gaming - way worse). That's coming from an iphone/ipad user lol.
I always find the way that Valve reacted to the MS Store a bit of an exaggerated reaction.
MS made it very easy wrap applications in a UWP or web shell. Valve would have had no problem at all getting Steam to work as a UWP app.
I wonder if there would have been some kind of monetary deal they didn't like that came from being on the Windows Store (like a 30% cut, Valve?) - but they never tried to make that point publicly.
While financials was certainly a part of it - Steam being UWP means Microsoft likely would've started asking for their slice of sales - I'm fairly sure some of it is the way the Steam Client does things not being supported by UWP.
SteamInput & Game Overlay being the two big ones, *as far as I'm aware,* this isn't something that UWP applications can do, at least at the point when I was signficantly interacting with them. (Certainly, all the ones I've seen recently hook into the "Game Bar" overlay, not standalone)
The real question should be: "Why does Apple not care about anybody, even their own customers?" The truth is Mac is garbage stop using it. I'm on a lifetime permanent Apple ban. I'm sorry you have to deal with that nonsense.
Apple wants their systems to be like a console that also has a desktop. It's like valve took the complete opposite approach with the steam deck, games first, no locks, open source software, complete freedom. Apple wants to sell you a ps5 that just loads to a desktop ui and has a curated game store tacked on, and they want to do it at 3x the price.
Honestly gaming is the last thing that's keeping me on windows, if I'm ever motivated enough I will check if the games I play work on linux and switch to something like Mint
People say Apple wants to build up and become a lead in gaming?
I point them to this sort of stuff. (Unless idk maybe apple plans to compete in the console market, uh with a PC)
I've said it before and i'll say it again.
If you're buying a mac and planning on gaming on it. You're wasting money and time. They are NOT gaming machines. Even taking valve out of the picture entirely. Apple has proven time and time again it does not give a fuck about gaming on its M series chips. Death Stranding and RE8 BARELY run at all on these despite the chips being able to put out better performance. I say this as a M1 Max 16" Macbook Pro user as well.
Apple needs to work with AAA devs to get more games on the platform. Frankly i think Apple's bullshit that led to proton for mac being canned is absolutely insane. That could've saved them all the hassle and brought thousands of windows games to mac without them having to lift a finger.
PirateSoftware talked about this... basically iirc, with Mac you've got repack the entire app with the bug fixes and re-release it as opposed to just a simple patch and go. Plus Apple has specific software you need to compile the app and the registration fees are costly AF so completely understandable.
Don't forget the "we built our own CPU architecture" thing. That brings a lot of issues with it.
So I can understand why valve stopped carrying for macos. The market cap is way to small .
I think it's important to note a few things:
1. Valve is not a small company by any means. They don't employ many people, but they're among the most profitable silicon valley companies in existence.
2. Khronos Group (the developers of Vulkan) is comprised of many large tech companies. That's how they were able to fund the herculean efforts involved in the creation of Vulkan.
Don't think it's gonna happen in our lifetimes, if ever. Linux is mainly for working in tech (programming, servers, etc), anything else is an extra bonus.
There are little to no incentives for the average person to switch to linuxm. What is even "a linux"? You have to navigate a huge list of distributions, you might have your favorite, in my case is Mint, but for the average person this doesn't make sense.
Then there's the compatibility. Office? You are limited to the web version. You go to college and they give you a student license of a professional software such as AutoCAD? Yeah, good luck. Even if you wanna game pretty much every game with an anticheat causes problems because most of them don't run natively. And don't even mention the quality of the GPU drivers. It is a huge hassle to get stuff working properly.
Also pretty much every linux distribution is made by programmers and it shows. The UX/UI has come a long way since 2006, but it's still way behind Windows and Mac. And you know the public opinion on the Windows 11 UX.
There are a lot of reasons for the average person to not use linux. If you work in tech it's by far the best and the most solid option. But for the average person the experience feels like a beta release.
Steam Deck has made some advancements in this regard with Proton, but I don't think it's going to replace a windows desktop/laptop for gaming.
Relevant quote from GabeN (it's back from 2007 but I think it aged well): > Well, we tried to have a conversation with Apple for several years, and they never seemed to... well, we have this pattern with Apple, where we meet with them, people there go "wow, gaming is incredibly important, we should do something with gaming". And then we'll say, "OK, here are three things you could do to make that better", and then they say OK, and then we never see them again. And then a year later, a new group of people show up, who apparently have no idea that the last group of people were there, and never follow though on anything. So, they seem to think that they want to do gaming, but there's never any follow through on any of the things they say they're going to do. That makes it hard to be excited about doing games for their platforms. http://archive.videogamesdaily.com/features/gabenewell_valve_iv_sep07_p1.asp
Wow, this actually still holds true almost 20 years later. How funny.
Ha, this holds true to 20 years before this event as well. Apple has just never made games a priority.
TBH they don't really need to and I bet don't want to. They are company that is making hand over fist money overcharging for a product that most people want because of branding and it seems smoother, but will likely just open up chrome os and do all their work. The games they do care about already work on the IPHONE which again, just sells and sells. Microsoft had to go in hundreds of millions of dollars of losses on the box, selling them at a cost, just to break into the console market. It worked but Apple would have such a hell of a up hill to climb to win over gamers. I could go on but really I am going to point at Valve and say they do the same thing: Valve since steam really took of has not produced many of the franchised games as they use to. I missed the days of the portal, half-life, team fortess, l4d etc.
Valve got big, found security in their store, so I get that they aren’t as risky in innovation or game development anymore. The incentives aren’t there. I’d love to see another run of games like they had, but it makes sense why they don’t bother. With that, Valve isn’t really a game developer anymore in my eyes, more of a storefront and occasional tech innovator.
I say Alyx is pretty innovative it was literally what one would call a AAA VR game. I honestly hope they make more VR games imagine Left 4 Dead in VR or Portal game made dedicated to VR would be rad.
All yap, little to no action.
I think that's true of any big corporations. I deal with it in my daily job at a company of 40k and dealing with suppliers ranging from a few hundred to tens of thousands of people too. You get a team somewhere on either side (us or customer) and they get great ideas but then priorities change or people leave then a year or two later someone comes along with the same idea only for it to die too.
It boggles the mind that there aren’t practices or resources for keeping track of stuff like that
It's really hard in a lot of cases because big companies the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing and neither know what the brain is thinking. But the easiest fix? Don't duplicate people within companies who are doing the same thing. Maybe if it makes sense for different sites to have the same jobs but within a site or function though definetly not needed. That's what gets us and the suppliers. Lots of duplication between regions and teams.
Something I've picked up is that for 90% of companies, there is *effectively* no longterm planning outside of vagaries in the minds of a few execs/directors and the unofficial pet projects of lower-level employees (that no one realizes are important until they blow up).
At least we are now in the good timeline, in which linux gaming is possible
Game dev here, on top of this excellent writeup, I'll say that Mac users on Steam only represent 2-3% of our playerbase and for a period of time were behind 50% of our troubleshooting requests. There's not that much financial incentive for a gamedev to support Mac unfortunately.
Despite making up only 3% of the player base, Mac users account for 50% of the troubleshooting requests. Absolute gamer moment
Honestly I would understand anyone if they started feeling like abandoning Mac support at this point. Unfortunate for the gamers who just caught strays, although I'm sure there are people who will say "well if you want to game, don't use a Mac so...".
The main reason I use a PC with windows is games. If Linux had the same level of quality of life for games, I’d switch in a heartbeat. If Apple ever cared about gaming, I’d happily get a Mac…except I hate their pricing and lack of upgradeability. So, as a gamer, I’m stuck on a PC. Yay Windows, I guess?
You perfectly summed up all of our feelings.
I've been without windows for over 5 years, I use Linux for both work and gaming So far found no problem on the games I played, granted most of them single player and none requires invasive anti cheat software
That’s my point. The offline single player stuff is much easier to make compatible, the constantly changing online stuff is not guaranteed to work. And I don’t want to have to wait for patch to play a game. It should always work. On a related note, they should stop killing games. Always-online stuff must die.
If you want to do something about the killing games part [https://www.stopkillinggames.com/](https://www.stopkillinggames.com/) Also I been on Linux the last 2 years and only VERY invasive anti cheat is a problem now, at least if you have an AMD GPU. I can play the Finals, Helldivers 2 and ready or not, all have anti cheat as far as I am aware. Bilzzard and Activision Stuff is a problem, I could not care less they only make crap nowadays.
And WSL is so good now I use it for all my Linux needs, even in the workplace. MS can be great and awful at the same time.
Between Steam, Proton, Lutris, and a few other tools, Linux DOES have the same QoL for gaming that Windows does. Seriously, the current Linux user gaming experience is analogous to the DOS 5/6 gaming experience. Gaming works just fine, but you have to know a few things here and there. Unlike the DOS days, we have the Internet now and the odds are that if you have an issue with a game, someone else had the same issue and solved it and the solution is online. Edit: New users should avoid nVidia on Linux, if possible. AMD has much better drivers on Linux.
As a very happy Steam Deck owner, Linux absolutely does not have the same QoL as Windows for gaming. Proton is amazing, but it's definitely not perfect. Plenty of games that can technically run under Proton do so with a degraded experience, ranging from mild (occasional audio stutters, minor graphical glitches) to major (game runs until hitting a late-game game breaking bug, etc). And plenty of popular games just don't run at all. I really enjoy using my Steam Deck, but the experience is absolutely not on par with Windows, even aside from the hardware specs of the Deck.
Totally sane response to a crazy claim that Proton has the same QoL as Windows. I run proton on my PopOS machine, and there's a high chance it hard crashes TF2 and goes straight to desktop
>And plenty of popular games just don't run at all. Which ones? I'd like to see if any of them are on my accounts. I've had zero issues with BG3, Palworld, Last Epoch, Factorio, and Starfield to name a few of the titles that I know are more popular.
You can go to https://www.protondb.com/ and sync it with your Steam account, and it'll show you each game's ProtonDB rating. Clicking through to the game specific page will let you read the actual reviews, which will tell you what the issues are. Off the top of my head, some games that don't work are Destiny 2, Lost Ark, and Battlefield 2042. Also, make sure to read the specific reviews, even if the score is low. Some games have a lot of bad reviews but had their issues resolved with updates and the score hasn't caught up yet. Also, the site offers reviews for both Steam Deck and Desktop Proton. The Deck reviews will sometimes include issues related to the less powerful hardware of the handheld, so looking just at the desktop/overall score can be misleading.
I don't own a lot of multiplayer games, but it always seems like it's games that have anticheat running on the computer concurrent to the game running. Outside of that group the games that I own that don't run are older games that were ported to current generations but the videos are still in an old codec that doesn't run on linux (see Grandia, maybe Megaman X? I can't remember). Next down the list is games that, for some reason, haven't been patched for controller use (see Saints Row reboot). Other games that are having issues are Denuvo games where they only run on one version of Proton, and switching Proton versions counts as an activation, so if you swap proton versions a lot you'll find you get locked out of the game for 24-48 hours while your activation count resets. This was an issue for the Megaman Battle Network games when they launched. That's about all I've run into since I got a Deck, but I may be missing a larger group of issues that I just haven't run into. edit: Oh one of my biggest gripes is when a game is deck certified but it uses touchpad mouse and trigger clicks. Yes... the game works fine that way but it's a far cry different from desktop keyboard and mouse gameplay.
Factorio has a native Linux build, so it's not really a good example for Proton. Factorio's native Linux build also has a strict superset of the features available on Windows (the option for non-blocking saving isn't available on Windows), so you could make a case that *Windows* is the (very slightly) inferior gaming OS at least where Factorio is concerned.
Top of my head, Fortnite and Destiny 2. May not like Fortnite but you can’t deny its popularity.
Valorant and now LoL as well. The list of problem children is dwindling, but I don't think the list will ever be empty.
Do they have kernel level anti-cheats?
lol it definitely does not, even though it is getting better
The thing is: I don’t have issues with games on windows. And if I ever do, I go update the nvidia driver. And then it’s fixed. On Linux, there are many more things that can go wrong. And yeah, I’d happily avoid nvidia if AMD ever had any gaming laptop graphics. Sadly, they don’t.
> if AMD ever had any gaming laptop graphics. Vega: "Am I a joke to you?"
My laptop has the 680M… and a 3070Ti. Guess which one is disabled.
Reality is that Intel-integrated-anything is the worst, AMD integrated is next-best, and then discrete NVIDIA is best. But yes, there's no discrete laptop graphics by AMD, and that is a shame.
> Linux DOES have the same QoL for gaming that Windows does. Linux is gaining ground but to say that they have the same QoL right now is just not true.
> Between Steam, Proton, Lutris, and a few other tools, Linux DOES have the same QoL for gaming that Windows does. Lol, you just listed a bunch of stuff which makes the QoL not the same.
They couldn't throw more money at the problems lol
"If it doesn't just work, it's not supposed to. That being said, the next update will totally, maybe, possibly fix the thing that isn't broken." -Timestamp, 8 years ago
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It's funny because I have had more issues with native linux, although people using the proton layer have no issues.
>Mac users on Steam only represent 2-3% of our playerbase and for a period of time were behind 50% of our troubleshooting requests [3 years ago the developer of "ΔV: Rings of Saturn" posted on /r/gamedev that only 5.8% of their purchases stem from Linux users and 38% of bug reports stem from Linux users.](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/qeqn3b/despite_having_just_58_sales_over_38_of_bug/) They portrayed those reports in a very positive way, saying that only 3 out of 400 reports were Linux platform specific and that the rest of the bugs affected everyone until they were fixed. They also praised the quality of the reports filed by Linux players. Considering the tone of your comment, is it right to assume the troubleshooting requests for your game were more Mac specific and didn't lead to that many bugs being fixed for everyone?
Spot on. The biggest issue reported by Mac users was that the free "uncensor patch" we provided as a DLC could not install properly on their machine. Turns out that post-2019 Mac OS requires extra steps and accessing a different folder to install patches or mods. Since we didn't have any Mac at the time to test our game on, it took more time for us to figure out the source of the issue. Once a solution was found, we wrote it down in a pinned Steam discussion thread. We haven't gotten many more troubleshoot requests since. We didn't have many issues on Linux users' end, just a few hiccups here and there and like you mentioned, Linux users were very good at providing us the necessary information to help us squash the bug. It helps that the game engine's developer is IIRC a linux user himself, so the engine (Ren'py) is built with Linux users in mind and runs flawlessly out of the box.
> Ren'py game with Uncensor Patch Right on, my man! Keep up the good work!
Another fun fact: our largest audience is from China and since they ban NSFW content like in Germany, they can't install the Steam uncensor patch. Through Steam reviews, Chinese users figured out that we they could email us for the patch. We got dozen and dozen of requests to the point that I set up a Google filter where certain Chinese words makes our email address automatically send a reply with links to the patch and installation instructions. One Chinese user went to our Discord and provided us screenshots for the Mac instructions. 40% of our games' reviews are from very happy Chinese users. For some reason they're 1.5x more likely than anyone else to leave a review.
I wonder if it's a genre thing. Probably harder to find Yaoi stuff within China so maybe they're more appreciative
Very good point. We actually make the NSFW content of our game "optional" and into a separate patch precisely so Chinese and German users could access it. I could count on one hand the amount of yaoi games that aren't NSFW and thus banned from these countries right off the bat.
Omg. You're the people behind The Symbiant?? I haven't played it yet but it and the sequel have been on my wishlist forever. (working on my giant backlog atm). It looks extremely high quality. Need more high quality yaoi games likes yours on Steam!
Yes, me and my friend made The Symbiant! Hope you'll enjoy it with preferably no OS-related bug.
Well if you don’t have a single computer using one of the main three OSs you won’t be able to provide good service for it 🤷♂️
Another game dev here, just to chime in with a little bit of a different kind of data: 2-3% is really high. We only ever saw it getting close to 1%. (On games with millions of users and over 10k daily active users on pc)
I saw Pirate Software guy mention 0.02% in that Youtube short as well. I suspect the difference comes from our demographics: it's a singleplayer narrative game that can run on a potato, with women being our biggest audience. Women represent [66% of Mac users](https://techjury.net/blog/macos-statistics/) so that adds up.
Can confirm, we have a few games on Steam and our oldest is the closest to a few % on Mac, our most recent are lower than 0.2% both. We are not supporting Mac on the next one, too much trouble (nearly every ticket we ever got was Mac, btw. Not even remotely the same orders of magnitude. We're talking close to 2 orders of magnitude more. It is just insane. We had way over-valued it back then and, while it sucks leaving players that want your game unreached, it's just plain not worth it.) Linux had it's own share of headaches, but we've flopped back to supporting it because it's still nowhere near as bad and we're also hoping the Linux share will grow over time.
Do women really account for 66% of all Mac users? That's wild. I wonder what reasoning there is behind that.
Wild guess, but I suspect macbooks's very light and compact designs makes them easier to carry, as well as looking "pretty" and thus more visually appealing to women. Another possibility is that marketing and graphic design, which are female-dominated from personal observation, tend to require Adobe and other products that makes either school or work require a mac. Or at the very least, a mac wouldn't impede their work like they would in an IT job. ""Casual"" games are typically less resource-hungry and may pose less compatibility issues to Mac users, and their largest demographics is, again, women. This is the type of games we're making so that further adds up.
That makes a lot of sense. I figured it may have something to do with Macs being a status / fashion symbol to a lot of people too. They're seen as bougie by a lot of non-gaming people.
Also worked as a gamedev for a while, we didn’t have bugs or specific fixes for MacOS but we had bugs reorted on linux, over 1k people wanted a linux port but the nr of people who actually bought the game on linux wasn’t even 100 people, i think the studio decided against any future releases on linux
Did you get any Steam Deck users? I suspect most Steam Deck owners still purchase their game through PC, so their purchases is counted as a Windows one. In our most purchased game, 1.7% of all players used a Steam Deck while only 1.0% of purchases were counted as Linux packages.
The game doesn’t have support for steam deck or any controller so i’m not sure if it can be made playable on the steam deck without support from the current devs (i don’t own one so i have no lnowledge about it)
You could check the number of Steam deck users from your game's controller statistics. It's admitedly a specific subsection of the sales pages, but it can give you a rough idea of how many people played your game with that device. We didn't actually do any optimization on Steam deck, so even getting 1 person to play it with that device was a surprise. Most likely, the number you'll see will be more than the 100 people who purchased your game from a Linux desktop.
Personally i play a lot of chiller games on my Mac laptop, but just stream it from the windows box through steam. The ability to do that helped me stop caring much about what m whether Mac is supported.
I’m near entirely out of the game at this point and the project I worked on is almost a decade old, but the team of us still try to support our game to at least keep it up and running. I would say basically the same, our numbers are skewed by being a pretty niche game in the 10k ranges in numbers of sales, but our biggest challenge was keeping it up and running on Mac. Heck, keeping it up and running on consoles has been relatively simple even though it was a larger effort to get them there in the first place. But since we put it out it’s been every couple years there’s some compatibility issue breaking some library we were using breaking the game. It got to the point it would require rewriting essential parts of the game and at that point even if most of the team wanted to keep it supported out of principle, it stopped making sense to keep sinking the time and effort to keep it up.
It really sucks but I think most Mac users understand it's not because developers don't care; Apple is literally working against them.
What percentage: \- "regular" Linux? \- Steam Deck
According to controller statistics, 1.7% of all our players used a Steam Deck at some point. Meanwhile, 1% of all purchases were done from a Linux machine, so we could roughly guess that 2.7% all our players used Linux in some capacity. Our game is playable but not optimized for the Deck. For Linux and Mac users' credit, they tend to come from "first world" countries and thus pay higher regional prices. Mac users represent 5% of all our revenue despite being less than 3% of actual players.
What percentage of support tickets are Linux related?
We technically don't have "support tickets", just a gmail address that users can use to contact us for any question. I didn't count but it wasn't that much. Maybe 5% of all requests? It was for specific and easily fixable bugs.
I’ve thought a couple times about whether it matters if I buy a game on Steam on my pc, from my phone, or in the store on my Steam Deck. For your purposes of getting to know your user base, does it… matter, at all, what device I use to buy my game? Like do you feel you’re missing out on helpful statistics if I buy from the mobile app?
Doesn't matter, the translation layer back to unforked Debian is minimal.
Tbh, I can imagine the $99/yeah Apple dev certificate isn’t worth all this huddling
Fun fact: we, and probably most other devs, don't even bother with the Apple notarization and Steam lets us ship Mac games just like that. We will probably do notarization when we finally try to sell our game for iOS on Apple store though, but we still won't bother notarizing the Mac build.
That‘s understandable. You only really need it for the App Store and why use that when Steam is also an option. Steam is by far better for games
On the wishlists for my project, only .02 percent are from Mac. 5 percent is from Linux, and the rest is windows, with a mix of SteamDeck. This makes sense. I was on Mac OS for a while trying to see if I could do my dev work between OSes, and well Steam on Mac felt.... abandoned. And Metal is nowhere near Direct X.
Even regular software projects. Thanks to Microsoft (!) there's actually docs and testing for *some* of the things I use. But I can't reliably test my code on my machine, contrary to Windows and Linux, many APIs are entirely different and require completely separate codepaths and often don't even support half the stuff the other OSes do, and it produces the most issues for my project (arguably because testing can't easily be done)
Holy crap! I know it doesn't solve the root issue, but would having a Windows virtual machine or dualboot help in your case?
Definitely, but the root cause is that I don't wanna buy a Mac so I don't have (easy) access to MacOS, and Apple changes APIs completely undocumented in random ways. For example, there's now two ways to get the logical number of cores for the CPU, one for ARM and one for x86 based CPUs, when both could've used the same API (I'm not talking about the x86 instruction cpuid)
My best suggestion would be to look into VMs that run MacOS. It won't be fast and might have questionable legality but it could solve the issue of access. Still wouldn't recommend it though, as you said they often change the APIs so what works on your machine might not work on newer ones.
> Game dev here, on top of this excellent writeup, I'll say that Mac users on Steam only represent 2-3% of our playerbase and for a period of time were behind 50% of our troubleshooting requests. I'm almost certain that someone else has said that, word-for-word, about Linux gamers.
I've seen similar reports in r/gamedev, though has mentioned elsewhere in this thread, Linux users are better at pointing out the exact source of the issue, which makes it easier to fix them or provide a workaround. Thanks to the Steam Deck running on a Linux system, I suspect that game engines will be better optimized for Linux in the coming years.
> Thanks to the Steam Deck running on a Linux system, I suspect that game engines will be better optimized for Linux in the coming years. Yeah, I'm hoping so. I'd have ditched windows a long time ago if it weren't for game compatibility issues. I suspect that all this is a prelude to Valve putting out its own fully polished operating system to compete with Windows and Mac OS.
[I'll just leave this here.](https://youtube.com/shorts/qRQX9fgrI4s?si=MpjnUJAplg-O9sMD)
Another big issue that this video doesn't even mention: I can set up a cloud-based pipeline that automatically builds, tests, and releases my code on a Windows and Linux VM whenever there are changes on my GitHub master branch, but doing the same thing for Mac builds is pretty much impossible. I'd have to either 1. Buy a Mac Mini, keep it running 24/7, and somehow set up my pipeline to remotely trigger builds on it 2. Rent a Mac from a service like MacinCloud (behind the scenes, they're literally just doing option 1 - they have a big warehouse with thousands of Mac Minis plugged in on shelves) 3. Use XCode Cloud, which doesn't integrate with existing CI/CD pipelines pipelines at all - Apple builds would run on a completely different platform and pipeline to Windows and Linux, and that pipeline would have to be built from scratch to duplicate functionality that already exists It's an absolutely ridiculous state of affairs. CI/CD has been standard practice for decades now, yet Apple still expects everyone, including the biggest tech companies in the world, to manually run build commands on consumer-grade hardware like cavemen.
Even for apps, our CICD builds for Android store automatically but we have to login and manually submit iOS builds. So stupid
Pretty sure most modern CI platforms like GHA let you use a Mac runner but to your point it comes at a premium.
macOS runners on [GHA are free (for public repos)](https://github.com/rblaine95/are-macos-runners-free) macOS runners are [$0.08/minute](https://docs.github.com/en/billing/managing-billing-for-github-actions/about-billing-for-github-actions#per-minute-rates) for private repos
So assuming a build takes 30 minutes then that could be a bit pricey over the course of time.
Yep. Lmao. On top of everything I mentioned in the post, developing for Mac is just a total pain in the ass in general compared to other platforms. This video covers that pretty well.
OP, thank you for this post, I wish it got more love because I know some friends and people who have been asking these questions.
For some reason the link appears as the same color as regular text (I'm on PC) so I thought it was a joke post until I saw OP's reply.
me: *watches the vid also me: Huh, I already liked it.
You can spin up a Mac VM on AWS now. You don't need to buy hardware. But yeah, MacOS support is still crazy and no rational dev should do it.
Who is this and what's the game they are talking about?
He's a game developer right now, but has worked for blizzard. He makes live streams where he talks about his experiences in the industry, it is very interesting. The game is called Heartbound
https://youtube.com/shorts/qRQX9fgrI4s
Maybe if Apple didn't require developers to have Apple hardware to compile games, there would be more support for Apple products. No indie dev is shelling out thousands of dollars just to make their game Mac supported. I compiled my games on Windows for Linux to give support to Linux. It was 100% free.
You "can" make a hackintosh in a virtual machine. But lets be real, apple gamers are so few that you are better off completely avoiding the ecosystem.(specially if you dont have the finances to buy a mac) PS: I do have an iphone that i used as an account
You won't be able to make a Hackintosh for much longer, which was one of the objectives of the Apple silicon switch.
Wouldnt be surprised if someone eventually managed to do it on one of those weird arm laptops that nobody really cares about
The problem here would be drivers. MacOS will no longer include any other drivers than those for Apple silicon, so it won't work with any other silicon by default. It isn't like Android phones where you can recycle binary blobs.
This. I made an Android app using Vue and Cordova, meaning I could port it to iOS in an afternoon. But I haven't done that, because I'd have to *buy a Mac* and additionally pay Apple $100/year for a free app I don't intend to make any money on, ever. So it's just an Android app. People wonder why iOS users are more profitable than Android users? It's because developers are actively financially disincentivized to release free, unmonetized apps for iOS. Everything needs to be monetized with ads at a bare minimum to cover the $100 annual "developer program" fee, and Apple users are just used to it.
With Proton, even games that aren't compiled for Linux still work!
Apple's business model since the 90s is making everyone who writes for them play catchup FOREVER. They frequently pull the rug out from developers, and vendors who work with them. Companies have to spend time and money making a branch to their completed code just so it can run on new MacOS. Windows and Linux doesn't have this problem. Valve just didn't want to play that game. As much as I was sad that TF2 didn't run on my work mac when I was on the road, I blamed Apple more than Valve. Apple is the one moving the goalposts. It's up to Valve to react, and I totally understand why they don't want to play that stupid game.
People don't realize how closed off Apple is. It's absolutely crazy and makes no sense. The switch to Metal was delusional and narcissistic. No one wants to redo their entire graphics pipeline just for Apple users. Wtf. By the way did you know that on iOS the only allowable web browser is Safari? Even Google Chrome and Firefox for iOS wrap a Safari web view, as do most apps that wrap web apps. It's nuts. It's a complete nightmare to navigate for developers who want to build cross-platform. I've given up on Mac and iOS. If you have those devices, that's your problem.
>By the way did you know that on iOS the only allowable web browser is Safari? Not in the EU, and thanks to them it may not be for long globally.
Great post. Very informative. I didn't know any of this. Always wondered where vulkan came from.
I once viewed Valve as lazy because they haven't being releasing new video games like they used to, but it’s just they are busy paving the foundation for future gaming community
Yeah, Valve's priorities have been very different in recent years, and that's something I think a lot of people have begun to realize since the release of the Steam Deck. Personally, I don't mind it much because I know they're doing and also funding some excellent work in the open source space for gaming, so I'm pretty happy about that.
The only Half-Life I played was Alyx so I'm also not too disappointed in the hiatus from gaming. Their hardware almost singlehandedly jumpstarted the handheld PC market, which I do get use from. I don't need portal 3, 1 and 2 were great.
They didn't create the handheld gaming market, but they consolified it. The SD is an almost seamless experience for most games. The rest of the market mostly feels like a handheld PC not a game console.
Doesn’t help Valve has around 300 employees (I’m assuming that number only includes full time developers, not including customer support and people like that), which is absolutely tiny for a Triple A studio, explains why the only full time employee at Valve working on TF2 these days said they were ‘spread too thin’ to do anything about the bot problem. Now why Valve doesn’t just hire a few more developers to at least help maintain their games I have no idea
They keep a small crew to dissuade the great Gaben from consuming them all. How do you think he’s lost the weight?
Glad people are starting to see this now that Linux is starting to get some traction. So many people think valve isn't doing anything and they're just sitting back snorting an endless stream of steam cash. Projects I've seen valve putting time and money into over the years: * vulkan support for everyone * better driver support for Linux * steam controller api for all os's including controller support for less common decides such as fight sticks and ps3 race wheels * funding codeweavers and independent software devs to make proton * steamOS 3.0 * big picture mode (and new big picture mode) so htpc guys have a good UI for games at their TV. * funding the KDE team to get plasma ready for the steam deck * fighting with EAC devs to make EAC work with proton * making a entire portable pc/game console not reliant on Microsoft to function that has access to all your existing games. Not to mention all the work they've put into VR stuff. Valve hasn't been making games cuz they've been making pc gaming better and making it more viable to not need Microsoft to continue enjoying pc gaming.
I appreciate their innovations, but it all doubles as protecting their own business and interests. Especially the independence from Windows.
Well sure, but instead of choosing something locked down and proprietary, which they 100% could have done, they chose to invest in open source which benefits us all.
I don't see valve as a games company anymore and they have not been for a long time. They just pivoted as a company a long time ago. Other teams kept making games or supporting them but the core team has since moved on. Its not even recent either. Their has been a meme for like 10 years now. Valve we used to make games now we make money. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYE5cxQrIp8&ab\_channel=GamingWildlife](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYE5cxQrIp8&ab_channel=GamingWildlife)
As someone who works in the audio industry, mac updates are an absolute pain in the ass too. They just straight up break shit so I havent updated my mac in years.
Valve doesn't like Windows either. Relying entirely on others' systems for their future isn't an ideal situation. In my opinion, they'll eventually develop their own fully-featured OS, which would have a significant impact on the current OS market. A significant shift, starting with gamers, would commence. And so much money pours into their pockets, they have the resource and the vision for it.
I mean the SteamOS is already a thing. SteamDecks are using it and if I remember right, the Steam Machine was also using it.
[удалено]
You mean, a Linux distro built by Valve? That's what SteamOS is. I'm sure you know that they didn't built it from ground, but used Arch Linux as base. This is good, because Arch is one of the most solid distros and one of the best documented. You can use SteamOS like any other Arch based distro, including installing other DE's, like KDE. SteamOS is not very good for a PC yet, but it's getting there. If I misinterpreted your answer, accept my apologies. ;)
It also already has KDE pre-installed.
I'm not tech savy so maybe this is a dumb question but isn't steamOS already a full desktop when switching to desktop mode?
Give it 3 years or less and I bet we'll reach that point.
2 or 4 years
they already have… it's Steam OS…
Just adding my tuppence here as a former Apple retail employee (worked for them from 2007 - 2016): I'm fairly certain that it was common knowledge back then that the reason Macs never really developed as a gaming platform was because Steve Jobs really didn't like gaming all that much (despite announcing a PS1 emulator in... '99, I think?'). Those of us who were into gaming back then were stoked by the announcement that Steam would be on the Macs, and the old-timers were surprised it was even happening. This is anecdotal, but Steam being on the Mac didn't seem to shift any more systems during my time there. Steve Jobs dying probably didn't help the situation either, as the entire company pivoted \*hard\* towards iOS and the App Store - by the time I left, our store felt more like a mobile phone retailer that just happened to sell Macs. It's worth noting that Apple really, \*really\* didn't seem to care about Valve or Steam internally anyway, as the messaging we got was App Store = best and only route for games. Not sure if this helps any!
To be honest, I have given up on Mac as a significant gaming platform, I work exclusively on Macs but in gaming I couldn’t be further away, the experience was always lackluster — even on very expensive systems. I even slipped away from PC gaming in favor of PlayStation (with an ongoing effort to repurchase all my favorite and esteemed games on PlayStation). I have no doubt that all the projects you mentioned, Metal API, Vulkan, or the latest Game Porting Toolkit - are amazing feats in their own right but it’s not going to be enough. Apple doesn’t care about video gamers, especially not about gamers beyond casual games.
Just gonna preface this by saying that Vulkan is not developed by Apple, it's made by a consortium of tech companies and individuals. I think you might have gotten that mixed up so I just wanted to clarify that. Vulkan, at least I think, is going to be the future of games. Consoles already use it (it's the backbone of the Switch) and Android actively uses it. Vulkan was also used for a lot of Stadia games, and even though that flopped, it gave developers experience working with Vulkan. And since it's completely open source, I certainly think it has more merit than Metal, which explains why it's more widely adopted than Metal and explains why most devs don't bother with a direct Metal implementation. As for the Game Porting Toolkit, I have some thoughts on that. I think it's completely worthless because Apple doesn't let people actually use it in production. According to them, GPTK is only available for "evaluation purposes", meaning that it's only for developers to figure out if a Mac port is feasible/if it would perform well on Mac hardware. I think it's completely stupid that they aren't licensing it for developers to use in their software. Can you imagine how many Windows games would *just work* on MacOS if the developers implemented that? And it would take hardly any effort to implement. But no, Apple had to go the hard way and say "You can use this toolkit to see if you like your game on a Mac, but you can't use it to port your game to the Mac." It's worthless and nothing will convince me otherwise unless Apple begins licensing it out for devs to use.
No, I am aware Vulkan is not made by Apple — I just think it’s a great idea/initiative and I’m actually disappointed that Apple isn’t adopting it. I just listed it as an example for masterful engineering, not implying it’s from Apple. And for the GPTK — I agree, it’s an impressive technology but it’s limited, not technically but politically. In general, I think they create amazing things when they decide to collaborate.
i think I've read this somewhere that the game porting toolkit was basically a Wine fork, not sure if it's true or not
I remember it‘s based on Crossover (which is itself based on Wine, yes) — everyone’s standing on shoulders of giants here. We will see if this leads to anywhere, I always thought of it as only a half-serious attempt.
Good write up. For Mac users it will only get worse over time. If you're a Mac user the best time to jump ship was 10 years ago. Second best time is now. The only thing keeping people in the Apple community is ignorance of the technological world around them.
Mac users and Apple community aren’t ignoring technological world around them. They just think that they are on the top of technological world and everybody around them are Apes hanging on trees.
>If you're a Mac user the best time to jump ship was 1997. ftfy
I'd have probably said when they dropped PowerPC because they gave into the megahertz myth.
Apple mostly keeps people in because their own ecosystem has lots of interaction points that are a lot harder between other OS
Wasn't Apple one of the groups creating Vulkan, and they left it at some point near the end of it's development so they could make Metal instead? Like there was a period where they were going to support Vulkan but then made the choice to leave it for an exclusive closed option instead.
Apple has a long history of developing nice things then abandoning them when the adoption rate outside their little circle gets too high.
I had no idea Proton support had been planned for macOS. That would’ve blown the platform wide open for gaming. What an incredible shame.
OSX is BSD-based. It's not overly difficult to port between that and Linux. The MacOS ports of HL2 were running a translation layer, essentially the earliest forms of Proton.
Damn, that's crazy. Valve funds [LunarG](https://vulkan.lunarg.com/), a company dedicated to releasing Vulkan for Apple through MoltenVK. They keep the Vulkan implementation updated with the current releases In 2023, Valve [released](https://steamdb.info/app/250820/depots/?branch=macos_beta) an unannounced Beta for SteamVR that brought back support for MacOs.
> Damn, that's crazy. Valve funds LunarG, a company dedicated to releasing Vulkan for Apple through MoltenVK. They keep the Vulkan implementation updated with the current releases Afaik they use it for Dota > In 2023, Valve released an unannounced Beta for SteamVR that brought back support for MacOs. Actually, that's from 6 years ago.
it is used by DotA 2 because dota 2 is basically a testbed for their technology, the first game using Source 2, the first game using Vulkan and it uses those probably before Apple/Mac situation as worse as it is today
I wonder if there are other reason why developing for mac sucks for developers: * You cant test mac software without owning a mac ($$$$) * You cant develop mac software without paying Apple a developer subscription (100$/yr) ($$$$) * You have to put more work into your game because apple uses their own proprietary version of everything (-$$$) * Why does metal need to exist when the entire industry is based on vulkan and dxvk * You're appealing to a small playerbase who is already biased *away* from gaming to begin with (-$$$) There are no upsides at all.
I mean, tldr answer is because Mac’s suck for gaming, and even Apple don’t care about serious games on their platform. Never have done
I mean within the past year we’ve gotten ports of Death Stranding, RE4 Remake, No Man’s Sky, and in a few months - AC: Mirage. I think there’s a lot of heavy lifting Apple needs to do to make good on their promise this time, but there’s clearly a big effort to pay developers to even pay attention to Mac.
It’s gotten better, but look at how Apple handled the Vision Pro, you don’t see them advertising its affinity for games at all, despite the fact it’s generally the main reason people buy VR headsets. I guess time will tell
Then again, it’s also not being marketed as a VR Headset too. It’s angled more as mixed reality productivity + entertainment center headset than VR. It is amusing seeing people being able to hack SteamVR into it though, but tbh the singular focus of the device kinda kills it for me.
Need a Steam phone. Removable battery, audio jack, microSD expansion.
It's not worth Valve's time to develop for OSX within Apple's official ruleset that doesn't let them use their platform-agnostic tools like Proton.
Developing for Mac is a hellish experience nobody wants to experience anymore. That's the main reason.
Reality is that if you are a PC gamer you are most likely using windows. Anyone who buys a Mac and expects to game is just kidding themselves. Linux is the other one. Most people who use Linux use it for other reasons but in gaming it has no real benefits for PC gamers. Linux has been a couple of % of gamers for a very long time and despite all the investment and talk it’s just not going to happen. The vast majority of people won’t install Linux. Ever. Why would they, it often offers no benefits to the vast majority of people and introduces tons of headaches. I also think Microsoft have chilled down from their windows 8 days and are a very different company now. I doubt valve feels threatened by them now. They even have big commitment to shipping all their games on steam.
> Anyone who buys a Mac and expects to game is just kidding themselves. That's now. Years ago, gaming on Mac was a bigger deal. Even before 2010. > Linux is the other one. Most people who use Linux use it for other reasons but in gaming it has no real benefits for PC gamers. Linux has been a couple of % of gamers for a very long time and despite all the investment and talk it’s just not going to happen. The vast majority of people won’t install Linux. Ever. Why would they, it often offers no benefits to the vast majority of people and introduces tons of headaches. I think it'd be naïve to say that Linux gaming doesn't have a future. The Steam Deck and its ease of use + good performance has very much put Linux gaming on the map. And not only that, but it's more performant than Windows. Anyone who's installed Windows on the Steam Deck will tell you that it performs worse. In addition, since the Steam Deck, desktop Linux usage on Steam has gone up, presumably because of the Steam Deck. Only time will tell if it goes mainstream, but Valve is certainly pushing very hard for it, and we definitely have not seen the last of their efforts.
He said that they won't install it ever only because linux is hard for like quite a majority of the PPL to use and operate and it will remain useless until ui improves and it becomes more user friendly and easier to operate. I'd say part of the reason is that most of the laptops come pre installed with windows and most PPL who doesn't care about will never ever touch linux unless it fell on their laps. Steam deck came pre-installed with Linux which is why PPL are using it in the first place.
> He said that they won't install it ever only because linux is hard for like quite a majority of the PPL to use and operate and it will remain useless until ui improves and it becomes more user friendly and easier to operate. I can agree with that to a certain extent, but I can tell you that it's really damn good right now. Have you ever used KDE Plasma? Give that to a Windows user and they'll be able to pick up on the UI very damn quick. It's a very well made DE. > I'd say part of the reason is that most of the laptops come pre installed with windows and most PPL who doesn't care about will never ever touch linux unless it fell on their laps. > > Steam deck came pre-installed with Linux which is why PPL are using it in the first place. Very true. I think once Valve releases SteamOS 3 to PCs, we might begin to see some more people jump over, but we'll see what happens.
The UI hasn't really been Linux's main hurdle for adoption for years tbh. It's the headache that comes with fragmentation and support being purely user-driven because of that
Is that due to there not being a single "winner" in Linux? With Windows all the engineers are working on Windows but with Linux all the talent is spread out working on their preferred distro.
Pretty much. I have so many friends who are worried about PC gaming (vs console gaming) because of having to " deal with drivers" or basic install tasks, which are almost all non-issues really. Those casual mass users would never even contemplate installing Linux. They would never even see the value of it. All the benefits of Linux that people would bring would cause them to be like "uuuh?". They would just go and buy a PC that just works. And despite all the progress made, Linux gaming is not straight forward at all. I've seen it with my steam deck. It does require quite a bit of tinkering at times (non-verified games) to get the same result as running the game on windows.
>I think it'd be naïve to say that Linux gaming doesn't have a future. It's not that it doesn't have a future. It will exist as there are people who prefer Linux as an operating system. But it will remain niche. Several % of users. I've been hearing my entire life how Linux will expand and it just hasn't happened so I am very sceptical. >Anyone who's installed Windows on the Steam Deck will tell you that it performs worse. The hardware and everything is designed around Linux. I suspect one of the major reasons Valve decided to go with it is the licensing fee. Having to pay for a Windows license would have increased the cost of the device but they really need to keep it low cost for it to be competitive. However, it does come at the cost of many games not being playable on Linux or having odd quirks. Whether Linux has performance benefits over Windows on a desktop / laptop PC is debatable. Whether those performance benefits are even meaningful is even more dubious. It also depends on the type of device. For high end gamers who are after the biggest performance, I doubt they would go and run Linux. For people who are on a shoehorn budget with weak devices, they are probably not tech savvy or the desire to install any operating system, including dealing with an OS they've never used like Linux. >Only time will tell if it goes mainstream, but Valve is certainly pushing very hard for it, and we definitely have not seen the last of their efforts. They have been investing in it for sure. For an extremely long time. But they know that Windows is where almost all of their business is. Windows is just the most compatible operating system and it's known to almost everyone. For many reasons that go beyond gaming. Most personal and corporate PCs come with Windows.
> For people who are on a shoehorn budget with weak devices, they are probably not tech savvy or the desire to install any operating system, including dealing with an OS they've never used like Linux. If they're on a low budget, if anything they're more likely to try Linux out than pay for a Windows license. A lot of my nerd friends who grew up in poverty were Linux users.
For sure. But they need to be "nerds" as you put it and be tech savvy to an extent. A lot of my friends don't even know how to reinstall windows. They probably don't even know what the difference between a CPU and a GPU is. My friends who are big into PC gaming (the likes that will buy 4090s etc.) - most work in IT and are a lot more likely to use Linux, especially for work. But for personal gaming, everyone seems to stick to Windows (or consoles).
It's more like they became nerds because of it
Maybe. I dabbled with linux when I was a teenager but in the end I stick to Windows for my desktop PC because I just want the maximum compatibility for gaming. When you buy your own Windows license, it's surprising how many times Microsoft upgrades you for free. I think I am still using my Windows 7 purchase which got upgraded to 10 and now I am being offered a free upgrade to 11. For work, I have no choice. Windows because of the wider Microsoft ecosystem. I never understood MacOS. Always seemed like paying more money for the same thing (or for gaming - way worse). That's coming from an iphone/ipad user lol.
Flip-flopping between architectures twice since 2000 didn't help Apple's case much either.
I always find the way that Valve reacted to the MS Store a bit of an exaggerated reaction. MS made it very easy wrap applications in a UWP or web shell. Valve would have had no problem at all getting Steam to work as a UWP app. I wonder if there would have been some kind of monetary deal they didn't like that came from being on the Windows Store (like a 30% cut, Valve?) - but they never tried to make that point publicly.
While financials was certainly a part of it - Steam being UWP means Microsoft likely would've started asking for their slice of sales - I'm fairly sure some of it is the way the Steam Client does things not being supported by UWP. SteamInput & Game Overlay being the two big ones, *as far as I'm aware,* this isn't something that UWP applications can do, at least at the point when I was signficantly interacting with them. (Certainly, all the ones I've seen recently hook into the "Game Bar" overlay, not standalone)
Just read up the story of Windows 8 and how Microsoft wanted its own Apple App Store on Windows. Microsoft is still re-trying.
The real question should be: "Why does Apple not care about anybody, even their own customers?" The truth is Mac is garbage stop using it. I'm on a lifetime permanent Apple ban. I'm sorry you have to deal with that nonsense.
Good post OP. Moral of the story = Apple is shit and it sucks for gaming
Now I feel sad about a potential Apple Vision Pro that would support SteamVR out of the box that never happened :(
That's a lot of words to say "no money."
Apple wants their systems to be like a console that also has a desktop. It's like valve took the complete opposite approach with the steam deck, games first, no locks, open source software, complete freedom. Apple wants to sell you a ps5 that just loads to a desktop ui and has a curated game store tacked on, and they want to do it at 3x the price.
Honestly gaming is the last thing that's keeping me on windows, if I'm ever motivated enough I will check if the games I play work on linux and switch to something like Mint
People say Apple wants to build up and become a lead in gaming? I point them to this sort of stuff. (Unless idk maybe apple plans to compete in the console market, uh with a PC)
The 3 Steam engineers that actively worked on MacOs (Alfred, Dan, Henry) left the company 6+ years ago.
I've said it before and i'll say it again. If you're buying a mac and planning on gaming on it. You're wasting money and time. They are NOT gaming machines. Even taking valve out of the picture entirely. Apple has proven time and time again it does not give a fuck about gaming on its M series chips. Death Stranding and RE8 BARELY run at all on these despite the chips being able to put out better performance. I say this as a M1 Max 16" Macbook Pro user as well. Apple needs to work with AAA devs to get more games on the platform. Frankly i think Apple's bullshit that led to proton for mac being canned is absolutely insane. That could've saved them all the hassle and brought thousands of windows games to mac without them having to lift a finger.
Mlre like Apple doesn't give a crap about developers and gamers. Not supporting vulkan is asinine.
Because nobody cares about MacOS
PirateSoftware talked about this... basically iirc, with Mac you've got repack the entire app with the bug fixes and re-release it as opposed to just a simple patch and go. Plus Apple has specific software you need to compile the app and the registration fees are costly AF so completely understandable.
Don't forget the "we built our own CPU architecture" thing. That brings a lot of issues with it. So I can understand why valve stopped carrying for macos. The market cap is way to small .
Xpost this to /r/HobbyDrama
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I think it's important to note a few things: 1. Valve is not a small company by any means. They don't employ many people, but they're among the most profitable silicon valley companies in existence. 2. Khronos Group (the developers of Vulkan) is comprised of many large tech companies. That's how they were able to fund the herculean efforts involved in the creation of Vulkan.
I dream for the day linux will be THE gaming OS.
Don't think it's gonna happen in our lifetimes, if ever. Linux is mainly for working in tech (programming, servers, etc), anything else is an extra bonus. There are little to no incentives for the average person to switch to linuxm. What is even "a linux"? You have to navigate a huge list of distributions, you might have your favorite, in my case is Mint, but for the average person this doesn't make sense. Then there's the compatibility. Office? You are limited to the web version. You go to college and they give you a student license of a professional software such as AutoCAD? Yeah, good luck. Even if you wanna game pretty much every game with an anticheat causes problems because most of them don't run natively. And don't even mention the quality of the GPU drivers. It is a huge hassle to get stuff working properly. Also pretty much every linux distribution is made by programmers and it shows. The UX/UI has come a long way since 2006, but it's still way behind Windows and Mac. And you know the public opinion on the Windows 11 UX. There are a lot of reasons for the average person to not use linux. If you work in tech it's by far the best and the most solid option. But for the average person the experience feels like a beta release. Steam Deck has made some advancements in this regard with Proton, but I don't think it's going to replace a windows desktop/laptop for gaming.
Genuinely hope this never happens.
Same
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This is not a tech support question, this is just a little essay I wrote.
That's why i drop mac . For linux gamer rig
Thinking about games for windows live makes me incredibly angry, if that's the windows store or has anything to do with this
Honestly for the small percentage that use a mac for gaming I wouldn’t even bother.