24 ms·

Linux surpasses the Mac among Steam gamers

433 points by Sporktacular 3y ago

Sporktacular 3y ago
As with embedded gear, Linux is popular when people don't realise they're choosing Linux.
- warning26 3y ago
  I think this applies to every operating system -- most people don't "choose" operating systems, they just use whatever came installed on the device.
- realusername 3y ago
  People don't choose Windows either, they just use whatever is preinstalled.
  - Sporktacular 3y ago
    I think large numbers of non-technical people make a conscious choice of OS when asking 'do I get a PC or a Mac'. Familiarity, compatibility with apps, games etc. I've not met a non-technical user actively choose Linux (or not complain if it's pre-installed). It's an anecdote but backed up by the numbers.
failuser 3y ago
Microsoft is trying to replace Chrome on Windows with Edge pretty hard. How far are we from Windows Store popping up when trying to buy a game on Steam and offering a discount or informing you that the game is on Game Pass?
- zacmps 3y ago
  In fairness, that later one I would quite like to know. I've accidentally bought a game I already had access to at least once!
- tapoxi 3y ago
  Only after the Activision acquisition goes through, they need to pretend they're friendly for a bit.
- 0dayz 3y ago
  I would argue it's slowly already happening, for instance with the game grounded, you gave to register with Microsoft to play multi-player
mkatx 3y ago
Steam gets all my gaming budget, as I really try to stick to Linux. If it ain't on steam, I don't play it, and they don't get my money.
- andrewmcwatters 3y ago
  It’s sad to me that you and many others have this opinion, which is fine, but Valve takes a significant tax from small companies while gamers, a cheap demographic, complain about the price of games. Games don’t need to be on Steam to be good.
  - acomjean 3y ago
    The issue kinda is on Linux we’re playing windows games. There is significant work done by valve on that proton compatability layer, so a lot of people on Linux want to support that. Without that us Linux users have a lot harder time gaming. There are some other launchers for epic games and gog (heroic game launcher I’ve used). It worked for me for a the couple games I tried (gloomhaven and disco elysium) but I’m using the proton wine I which I think was put out there by valve/steam.
    - FloatArtifact 3y ago
      Isn't 30% the standard besides epic store?
    - kristofferg 3y ago
      This I agree with. If the game developer can produce a Linux binary I am happy to buy on other stores (I prefer GOG). They usually do _not_ and I don’t want to spend time to wrap and configure windows apps to run on Linux. You can consider the 30% steam fee outsourcing the multi-platform “porting”.
      - theshrike79 3y ago
        Many gamedevs actually stopped building a specific Linux binary because the Proton compatibility version was so much faster and required almost zero effort from them =)
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
[dupe]
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago
  More discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36965836 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36965836
julianeon 3y ago
If you'd told me 10 years ago that "2023 will be the year of the Linux gaming machine," I would've lol'd. You never can tell.
- lawn 3y ago
  ChatGPT, LK-99 and now it's the year of Linux gaming. 2023 is wild indeed.
  - slt2021 3y ago
    +small molecure that treats cancer https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36982813 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36982813
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- Aleksdev 3y ago
  Yes, every year we have heard this is the year of Linux. It does seem like it’s becoming reality doesn’t it?
  - julianeon 3y ago
    I think so. It's certainly stopped being a joke; you can take various news items as "the year of Linux" seriously at this point.
  - fsflover 3y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36892464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36892464
  - hospitalJail 3y ago
    I think this is more of a Microsoft has dropped the ball, than Linux exceling. I switched to Linux because Windows Filesystem was too unreliable with OneDrive hijacking it. (Also Cortana, auto open edge links, ads/ragebait news in the start menu) But I needed something reliable, and Microsoft is no longer reliable.
joshe 3y ago
Finally Linux will get the same respect Mac gets from gaming publishers.
- deaddodo 3y ago
  As in: "If we built it in OpenGL/Vulkan, we will attempt to compile it on Mac; and if it works, release it in a mostly untested form"? At least Vulkan is a first-class citizen on Linux, so the aforementioned issues are even less headache-filled.
  - troupo 3y ago
    And yet, game developers don't care about Vulkan since it's non-existent on actual gaming platforms that bring in money
    - jhasse 3y ago
      Red Dead Redemption 2 has a Vulkan renderer. Doom and the new Wolfenstein games, too. Also the Nintendo Switch supports Vulkan.
      - troupo 3y ago
        Yes. Some games have a Vulkan renderer (probably because they can afford to). This is a good table for Vulkan support across platforms: https://www.ravbug.com/graphics/ https://www.ravbug.com/graphics/ And on Linux your best bet is to run DirectX through compatibility software like what SteamDeck does.
        brmgb 3y ago
        It's 2023. Pretty much everyone is using Unreal Engine, Unity or Godot for the bravest. Custom renderers are a thing of the past. The reason game developers don't release on macOS and Linux is the costs of testing and supporting the platforms, not the availability of the renderers.
015a 3y ago
> But before you declare this a triumphant moment for desktop Linux, it's important to note that some of these Linux users are not, in fact, using Steam on a desktop. The Linux version "SteamOS Holo" 64-bit is the most popular reported, at just over 42 percent of the Linux slice of pie. That indicates that a huge portion of these Linux users are actually playing on Valve's Steam Deck portable, which runs Linux. There's such a deep seeded, systemic bias against linux that it actually can never win, to any degree or magnitude, because the moment it starts winning we just move the goal-posts for the flimsiest of reasons to ensure it can't quite claim that victory. Linux is obviously and clearly the most popular operating system kernel on the planet. Oh, no, that's no good a measure, servers are messy, let's refine it to most popular consumer operating system kernel? Oh... it, could also reasonably claim that title? No no, no Android, that doesn't count. Nope, No Chrome OS either, you can't have that, that's, well, that is linux, but its not. Just nice, pure, desktop linux, yes, perfect, arch linux, kde desktop, that'll never trend up and thus is the perfect new-new definition of desktop linu--wait hold up, I'm getting word this is, not possible, its actually SteamOS? Nope, kill it, that's not desktop linux either, kill it.
- memefrog 3y ago
  Yet the same people who do all this goalpost-shifting will also claim that it's pedantic to say GNU/Linux and that Linux is 'just a kernel'.
  - Arnavion 3y ago
    Not the same people, no.
    - prmoustache 3y ago
      It is funny how people put everybody in the same bag. There are many kind of linux users, and many reason to use linux. We don't all agree on the why and the how, which is one of the reason there are so many linux based OSes/distros. And that is fine.
- deaddodo 3y ago
irrational 3y ago
There are so many games that I want to play that are PC only. I really wish people could make multi-platform games.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  Consoles purposefully add a big barrier for indies, so that doesn't help. I'm sure many devs would love to support console but lack the resources. I can't think of a single AAA/AA game that is PC exclusive.
  - irrational 3y ago
    Well, I don’t own a console, just a Mac. There are a number of games on Steam I’d like to play, but they are PC only. Perhaps they are also available on consoles, but I wouldn’t know.
    - account42 3y ago
      A Mac is a PC.
      - irrational 3y ago
        Only if you are being pedantic. Everyone else knows PC means a computer running Windows OS.
        account42 3y ago
        Nope. Apple's marketing does not define these terms.
    - ranger207 3y ago
      Macs have many of the same problems as consoles with exclusive SDKs and custom graphics stacks (Metal) but without the benefit of the console manufacturer working to make it (relatively) easy to make and sell games on their platform.
deafpolygon 3y ago
In unrelated news, macOS is now the 2nd most popular gaming platform - after iOS. Now that you can run iOS apps on it.
- KeplerBoy 3y ago
  What makes you think iOS is the most popular gaming platform?
  - numpad0 3y ago
    looked up: video game industry is $190bn and lootbox is $19bn market. iOS therefore cannot be the most popular platform, despite it possibly with highest mental share for some.
    - troupo 3y ago
      You don't just look at money, you also look at time spent. But even when it comes to money, https://sea.mashable.com/tech-1/20432/60-of-entire-gaming-market-is-now-dominated-by-mobile-gaming-study-finds https://sea.mashable.com/tech-1/20432/60-of-entire-gaming-ma... Mobile gaming is nearly double the rest of gaming market combined. However, it looks like Android gets more money there: https://www.businessofapps.com/data/mobile-games-revenue/ https://www.businessofapps.com/data/mobile-games-revenue/
      - KeplerBoy 3y ago
        I would be more interested in something like median money and time spent. I suspect mobile gaming is dominated by a long tail of whales, but what do I know. Gaming on phones never really appealed to me.
- andreime 3y ago
  Popular? Are you really thinking macOS is now the 2nd most popular gaming platform because it can run iOS apps?
muxamilian 3y ago
Since there are so few games available for macOS, I signed up for GeForce NOW, and I don't look back. I have a feeling that native gaming might be slowly replaced by cloud gaming.
jillesvangurp 3y ago
I have a cheap laptop that runs Manjaro and Steam. I use it exclusively for gaming at this point. Mostly some older games. But it works great. Most games I have work fine, even though the intel GPU is a bit limiting. I'm considering buying something with more oompf at some point. It strikes me that with all the progress on getting Linux working on the M1, getting Steam going there should also be doable and I think it already partially works. But of course Valve could double down on getting proton working on mac os as well. I don't think that there are many fundamental blockers for that beyond the dealing with metal instead of vulkan and intel vs arm. And they could fall back to using e.g. qemu. It's probably a bit of work but it's also a rich market of people used to spending money on expensive hardware that might be tempted to buy lots of Steam games if it becomes easy enough. And of course they have an insane catalog of older games that aren't that demanding that probably run fine even in an emulator. I bet this would piss Apple off a lot though but I'm not sure they'd be able to do much about it.
- thathndude 3y ago
  I’d sure love to see this. Gaming with a Mac continues to be so disappointing.
- augusto-moura 3y ago
  Ehh, I don't know how much Wine is integrated on the MacOS version, but AFAIK it was a subpar version compared to the Linux one. Don't be fooled by the numbers, while we advanced a lot, Windows compatibility is a wild animal and Wine/Proton is still broken for a lot of things. I'm not sure if we will ever get full compatibility, but concurrent MacOS support looks like a great undertaking. It might be possible though.
anothernewdude 3y ago
I believe it. Game support under linux is fine. I don't even bother to check compatibility. I also have an M1. It can't play anything. No Proton, no 32 bit games, it's useless.
bnralt 3y ago
> Meanwhile, Apple has been making a lot of noise about making the Mac a more viable gaming platform, given the exceptionally strong graphics performance (for integrated graphics on a laptop, at least) of the M1 and M2 series chips in the latest Macs. Mac was actually doing pretty decently for game a few years back. A pretty big chunk of the games on Steam, including many of the high profile games, were available on OSX. Dropping 32-bit support set things back immensely, however. With that one decision, Apple made the number of games available to OSX users a small fraction of the amount that was available before.
- gangstead 3y ago
  Agreed. I stopped using Steam and their games on Mac when all the games I had purchased stopped working. That was the end of any Mac gaming for me. I didn't have a Windows machine so I stopped using Steam completely for a few years until the Deck came out.
- jsheard 3y ago
  It's probably only a matter of time before Apple drops support for OpenGL and/or x64 binaries, which would wipe out another whole chunk of Mac gaming history. PowerPC binaries are no longer usable, x86 binaries are no longer usable, I don't see why they wouldn't do it again in the name of streamlining the platform.
  - als0 3y ago
    > x86 binaries are no longer usable What do you mean by this? Rosetta 2 is very fast and it runs a lot of x86 apps well.
    - jsheard 3y ago
      I meant x86 as in 32-bit Intel, as opposed to x64 or x86-64 or AMD64 or whatever you want to call it. Catalina ended support for 32-bit binaries even on Intel Macs, and Rosetta2 could never run 32-bit code.
      - 3y ago
Razengan 3y ago
Steam (or the publishers) also tend to hinder the Mac versions unfairly: Some games are marked as being incompatible with macOS Catalina and above, but they run just fine.
kozikow 3y ago
My "dual booting for occasional games" Windows for some reason stopped working, and it was quicker to figure out gaming on Linux. With Lutris Diablo 4 worked perfectly, Baldur's Gate 3 has some issues (very rare error, Directx instead Vulkan - it's slower than I would expect on my hardware, not sure if Linux is the issue).
hospitalJail 3y ago
Due to Microsoft's Forced OneDrive on Windows 11, I installed my first ever Linux OS on my main (high performance) laptop. It took a few hours of messing around until I finally decided to follow the Asus-Linux tutorial, which worked flawlessly. My suggestion for anyone looking to make the jump, follow a tutorial. (I thought my tech skills would be enough, but there are some gotchas) Anyway I installed Steam last night! (And ran into an issue playing Dwarf Fortress, classic Linux... but at least I don't have to worry about M$ hijacking my filesystem anymore!)
- ulkesh 3y ago
  You'll find, as I have, that laptops and Linux distributions/DEs don't always play well together (lid closing/reopening, suspend/hibernate, keyboard backlight, function key alternate media controls, trackpad, etc). It's sometimes a shot in the dark if not buying from a company that helps guarantee Linux support/compatibility for all the hardware in the system (Dell XPS 13 plus developer, System 76, etc). That's great there was a tutorial that got everything working well, especially for your specific setup! I'm also now running Linux as my only operating system on my gaming desktop machine (I run Arch, btw ;D ). Steam/Proton and Lutris make gaming a relative cinch now, and I've been hoping for this since I first started with Linux in 1999. Edit>> Words are hard.
shpx 3y ago
Steam is the worst application on macOS I use. It can't even scroll the game collection at 60fps and when I launch a game without Steam open I need wait 15 seconds to see the actual game's loading screen or 30+ if Steam decides to update. It's so slow that if you told me it's emulating an entire Windows environment, I would believe you. It's just an application launcher, a glorified Start menu. I would never choose to use it, it's forced on me because of the Steam store.
nologic01 3y ago
it would be cool if indie / open source game development would make linux more attractive to a wider population of gamers. with the cloudification of everything they are one of the few remaining demographics that values serious "local" hardware. but the nature of compute intensive modern game development seems so extremely large budget that such a grassroots efforts stand little chance. the linux desktop definitely feels like waiting for godot [1] :-) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_Godot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_Godot
jonathantf2 3y ago
Steam on macOS is soooooooooooo slow, the only reason I have it is for Steam Chat and even with just that open it's extremely laggy.
liotier 3y ago
With the Proton compatibility layer, the Microsoft Windows versions of Battlebit, Squad and Warno perform perfectly on Debian - I don't even think about it. Steam gaming on Linux Just Works !
reilly3000 3y ago
It’s worth noting that Steam gaming on M1+ chips is nearly impossible. My library of hundreds of games yielded only a dozen titles that were playable, compared with about 20% of my library that runs on my Intel Mac. Publishers simply couldn’t care less about supporting Apple Silicon outside of a handful of mostly casual indie games. For as wonderful as Steam gaming on Linux has become, the Mac side has seemed to regress in equal measure.
- gunapologist99 3y ago
  Probably at least in part by design, as with everything else in MacWorld.. how is Apple well served by allowing a competing app store that's dominant in gaming?
- aalimov_ 3y ago
  Not really the case anymore. If you set up Apple Game Porting Toolkit, or download one of the several GUIs for it.
- hypercube33 3y ago
  Also to note a majority that do support Intel macs are 32 bit so don't run on modern mac osx
- hombre_fatal 3y ago
  I play games on Windows via Parallels. Doesn’t really matter to me when games are Mac native or not, they are just an alt-tab away.
- rmuratov 3y ago
  I believe it's the opposite - more publishers will consider porting to Mac. Previously, you could only play on desktop Macs with a discrete graphics card. But now there is a M1 Macbook with powerful graphics out of the box. And the install base is pretty big. But it only will happen with the help from Apple. We already see the first attempts - Death Stranding will be available natively on M1 Macs.
  - ric2b 3y ago
sgjohnson 3y ago
Only now? Considering how Apple has neglected gaming, and especially considering that most Mac games on Steam are 32-bit, which no macOS version released within the past 4 years can even run? And 42% of that is Steam Deck... It's a little bit disappointing, to be honest.
1583 3y ago
mac isnt for gaming
yndoendo 3y ago
You have to pay me to use Windows and macOS. After speeding years using both products, I don't want to use them any more unless I'm getting paid. I personally do not need any software that is tied to either platform. Professional, depends on what needs to be done. Not all have this view and nor most will. Hard-core gamer will most likely keeping on Windows unless developers and distributors change their ways. Some people buy a computer because of the OS it is running and they need select applications to run. Most only need a web browser and it does not matter what OS they run, often it is the least expensive laptop. Something that has a bigger screen than a smart-phone. Windows backwards capability is also limited. Gaming: never was able to get Slave Zero running on a Windows XP box, only Win98. Development: had to ignore the input event system Microsoft designed for WinForms and WPF, using Win32 message pump directly, because of faulty drivers and new features breaking backward capability.

433 points by Sporktacular 3y ago

Sporktacular 3y ago

As with embedded gear, Linux is popular when people don't realise they're choosing Linux.

warning26 3y ago
I think this applies to every operating system -- most people don't "choose" operating systems, they just use whatever came installed on the device.
realusername 3y ago
People don't choose Windows either, they just use whatever is preinstalled.
- Sporktacular 3y ago
  I think large numbers of non-technical people make a conscious choice of OS when asking 'do I get a PC or a Mac'. Familiarity, compatibility with apps, games etc. I've not met a non-technical user actively choose Linux (or not complain if it's pre-installed). It's an anecdote but backed up by the numbers.

failuser 3y ago

Microsoft is trying to replace Chrome on Windows with Edge pretty hard. How far are we from Windows Store popping up when trying to buy a game on Steam and offering a discount or informing you that the game is on Game Pass?

zacmps 3y ago
In fairness, that later one I would quite like to know. I've accidentally bought a game I already had access to at least once!
tapoxi 3y ago
Only after the Activision acquisition goes through, they need to pretend they're friendly for a bit.
0dayz 3y ago
I would argue it's slowly already happening, for instance with the game grounded, you gave to register with Microsoft to play multi-player

mkatx 3y ago

Steam gets all my gaming budget, as I really try to stick to Linux. If it ain't on steam, I don't play it, and they don't get my money.

andrewmcwatters 3y ago
It’s sad to me that you and many others have this opinion, which is fine, but Valve takes a significant tax from small companies while gamers, a cheap demographic, complain about the price of games. Games don’t need to be on Steam to be good.
- acomjean 3y ago
  The issue kinda is on Linux we’re playing windows games. There is significant work done by valve on that proton compatability layer, so a lot of people on Linux want to support that. Without that us Linux users have a lot harder time gaming. There are some other launchers for epic games and gog (heroic game launcher I’ve used). It worked for me for a the couple games I tried (gloomhaven and disco elysium) but I’m using the proton wine I which I think was put out there by valve/steam.
  - FloatArtifact 3y ago
    Isn't 30% the standard besides epic store?
  - kristofferg 3y ago
    This I agree with. If the game developer can produce a Linux binary I am happy to buy on other stores (I prefer GOG). They usually do _not_ and I don’t want to spend time to wrap and configure windows apps to run on Linux. You can consider the 30% steam fee outsourcing the multi-platform “porting”.
    - theshrike79 3y ago
      Many gamedevs actually stopped building a specific Linux binary because the Proton compatibility version was so much faster and required almost zero effort from them =)

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

[dupe]

ChrisArchitect 3y ago
More discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36965836 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36965836

julianeon 3y ago

If you'd told me 10 years ago that "2023 will be the year of the Linux gaming machine," I would've lol'd. You never can tell.

lawn 3y ago
ChatGPT, LK-99 and now it's the year of Linux gaming. 2023 is wild indeed.
- slt2021 3y ago
  +small molecure that treats cancer https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36982813 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36982813
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
Aleksdev 3y ago
Yes, every year we have heard this is the year of Linux. It does seem like it’s becoming reality doesn’t it?
- julianeon 3y ago
  I think so. It's certainly stopped being a joke; you can take various news items as "the year of Linux" seriously at this point.
- fsflover 3y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36892464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36892464
- hospitalJail 3y ago
  I think this is more of a Microsoft has dropped the ball, than Linux exceling. I switched to Linux because Windows Filesystem was too unreliable with OneDrive hijacking it. (Also Cortana, auto open edge links, ads/ragebait news in the start menu) But I needed something reliable, and Microsoft is no longer reliable.

joshe 3y ago

Finally Linux will get the same respect Mac gets from gaming publishers.

deaddodo 3y ago
As in: "If we built it in OpenGL/Vulkan, we will attempt to compile it on Mac; and if it works, release it in a mostly untested form"? At least Vulkan is a first-class citizen on Linux, so the aforementioned issues are even less headache-filled.
- troupo 3y ago
  And yet, game developers don't care about Vulkan since it's non-existent on actual gaming platforms that bring in money
  - jhasse 3y ago
    Red Dead Redemption 2 has a Vulkan renderer. Doom and the new Wolfenstein games, too. Also the Nintendo Switch supports Vulkan.
    - troupo 3y ago
      Yes. Some games have a Vulkan renderer (probably because they can afford to). This is a good table for Vulkan support across platforms: https://www.ravbug.com/graphics/ https://www.ravbug.com/graphics/ And on Linux your best bet is to run DirectX through compatibility software like what SteamDeck does.
      - brmgb 3y ago
        It's 2023. Pretty much everyone is using Unreal Engine, Unity or Godot for the bravest. Custom renderers are a thing of the past. The reason game developers don't release on macOS and Linux is the costs of testing and supporting the platforms, not the availability of the renderers.

015a 3y ago

> But before you declare this a triumphant moment for desktop Linux, it's important to note that some of these Linux users are not, in fact, using Steam on a desktop. The Linux version "SteamOS Holo" 64-bit is the most popular reported, at just over 42 percent of the Linux slice of pie. That indicates that a huge portion of these Linux users are actually playing on Valve's Steam Deck portable, which runs Linux. There's such a deep seeded, systemic bias against linux that it actually can never win, to any degree or magnitude, because the moment it starts winning we just move the goal-posts for the flimsiest of reasons to ensure it can't quite claim that victory. Linux is obviously and clearly the most popular operating system kernel on the planet. Oh, no, that's no good a measure, servers are messy, let's refine it to most popular consumer operating system kernel? Oh... it, could also reasonably claim that title? No no, no Android, that doesn't count. Nope, No Chrome OS either, you can't have that, that's, well, that is linux, but its not. Just nice, pure, desktop linux, yes, perfect, arch linux, kde desktop, that'll never trend up and thus is the perfect new-new definition of desktop linu--wait hold up, I'm getting word this is, not possible, its actually SteamOS? Nope, kill it, that's not desktop linux either, kill it.

memefrog 3y ago
Yet the same people who do all this goalpost-shifting will also claim that it's pedantic to say GNU/Linux and that Linux is 'just a kernel'.
- Arnavion 3y ago
  Not the same people, no.
  - prmoustache 3y ago
    It is funny how people put everybody in the same bag. There are many kind of linux users, and many reason to use linux. We don't all agree on the why and the how, which is one of the reason there are so many linux based OSes/distros. And that is fine.
deaddodo 3y ago

irrational 3y ago

There are so many games that I want to play that are PC only. I really wish people could make multi-platform games.

johnnyanmac 3y ago
Consoles purposefully add a big barrier for indies, so that doesn't help. I'm sure many devs would love to support console but lack the resources. I can't think of a single AAA/AA game that is PC exclusive.
- irrational 3y ago
  Well, I don’t own a console, just a Mac. There are a number of games on Steam I’d like to play, but they are PC only. Perhaps they are also available on consoles, but I wouldn’t know.
  - account42 3y ago
    A Mac is a PC.
    - irrational 3y ago
      Only if you are being pedantic. Everyone else knows PC means a computer running Windows OS.
      - account42 3y ago
        Nope. Apple's marketing does not define these terms.
  - ranger207 3y ago
    Macs have many of the same problems as consoles with exclusive SDKs and custom graphics stacks (Metal) but without the benefit of the console manufacturer working to make it (relatively) easy to make and sell games on their platform.

deafpolygon 3y ago

In unrelated news, macOS is now the 2nd most popular gaming platform - after iOS. Now that you can run iOS apps on it.

KeplerBoy 3y ago
What makes you think iOS is the most popular gaming platform?
- numpad0 3y ago
  looked up: video game industry is $190bn and lootbox is $19bn market. iOS therefore cannot be the most popular platform, despite it possibly with highest mental share for some.
  - troupo 3y ago
    You don't just look at money, you also look at time spent. But even when it comes to money, https://sea.mashable.com/tech-1/20432/60-of-entire-gaming-market-is-now-dominated-by-mobile-gaming-study-finds https://sea.mashable.com/tech-1/20432/60-of-entire-gaming-ma... Mobile gaming is nearly double the rest of gaming market combined. However, it looks like Android gets more money there: https://www.businessofapps.com/data/mobile-games-revenue/ https://www.businessofapps.com/data/mobile-games-revenue/
    - KeplerBoy 3y ago
      I would be more interested in something like median money and time spent. I suspect mobile gaming is dominated by a long tail of whales, but what do I know. Gaming on phones never really appealed to me.
andreime 3y ago
Popular? Are you really thinking macOS is now the 2nd most popular gaming platform because it can run iOS apps?

muxamilian 3y ago

Since there are so few games available for macOS, I signed up for GeForce NOW, and I don't look back. I have a feeling that native gaming might be slowly replaced by cloud gaming.

jillesvangurp 3y ago

I have a cheap laptop that runs Manjaro and Steam. I use it exclusively for gaming at this point. Mostly some older games. But it works great. Most games I have work fine, even though the intel GPU is a bit limiting. I'm considering buying something with more oompf at some point. It strikes me that with all the progress on getting Linux working on the M1, getting Steam going there should also be doable and I think it already partially works. But of course Valve could double down on getting proton working on mac os as well. I don't think that there are many fundamental blockers for that beyond the dealing with metal instead of vulkan and intel vs arm. And they could fall back to using e.g. qemu. It's probably a bit of work but it's also a rich market of people used to spending money on expensive hardware that might be tempted to buy lots of Steam games if it becomes easy enough. And of course they have an insane catalog of older games that aren't that demanding that probably run fine even in an emulator. I bet this would piss Apple off a lot though but I'm not sure they'd be able to do much about it.

thathndude 3y ago
I’d sure love to see this. Gaming with a Mac continues to be so disappointing.
augusto-moura 3y ago
Ehh, I don't know how much Wine is integrated on the MacOS version, but AFAIK it was a subpar version compared to the Linux one. Don't be fooled by the numbers, while we advanced a lot, Windows compatibility is a wild animal and Wine/Proton is still broken for a lot of things. I'm not sure if we will ever get full compatibility, but concurrent MacOS support looks like a great undertaking. It might be possible though.

anothernewdude 3y ago

I believe it. Game support under linux is fine. I don't even bother to check compatibility. I also have an M1. It can't play anything. No Proton, no 32 bit games, it's useless.

bnralt 3y ago

> Meanwhile, Apple has been making a lot of noise about making the Mac a more viable gaming platform, given the exceptionally strong graphics performance (for integrated graphics on a laptop, at least) of the M1 and M2 series chips in the latest Macs. Mac was actually doing pretty decently for game a few years back. A pretty big chunk of the games on Steam, including many of the high profile games, were available on OSX. Dropping 32-bit support set things back immensely, however. With that one decision, Apple made the number of games available to OSX users a small fraction of the amount that was available before.

gangstead 3y ago
Agreed. I stopped using Steam and their games on Mac when all the games I had purchased stopped working. That was the end of any Mac gaming for me. I didn't have a Windows machine so I stopped using Steam completely for a few years until the Deck came out.
jsheard 3y ago
It's probably only a matter of time before Apple drops support for OpenGL and/or x64 binaries, which would wipe out another whole chunk of Mac gaming history. PowerPC binaries are no longer usable, x86 binaries are no longer usable, I don't see why they wouldn't do it again in the name of streamlining the platform.
- als0 3y ago
  > x86 binaries are no longer usable What do you mean by this? Rosetta 2 is very fast and it runs a lot of x86 apps well.
  - jsheard 3y ago
    I meant x86 as in 32-bit Intel, as opposed to x64 or x86-64 or AMD64 or whatever you want to call it. Catalina ended support for 32-bit binaries even on Intel Macs, and Rosetta2 could never run 32-bit code.
    - 3y ago

Razengan 3y ago

Steam (or the publishers) also tend to hinder the Mac versions unfairly: Some games are marked as being incompatible with macOS Catalina and above, but they run just fine.

kozikow 3y ago

My "dual booting for occasional games" Windows for some reason stopped working, and it was quicker to figure out gaming on Linux. With Lutris Diablo 4 worked perfectly, Baldur's Gate 3 has some issues (very rare error, Directx instead Vulkan - it's slower than I would expect on my hardware, not sure if Linux is the issue).

hospitalJail 3y ago

Due to Microsoft's Forced OneDrive on Windows 11, I installed my first ever Linux OS on my main (high performance) laptop. It took a few hours of messing around until I finally decided to follow the Asus-Linux tutorial, which worked flawlessly. My suggestion for anyone looking to make the jump, follow a tutorial. (I thought my tech skills would be enough, but there are some gotchas) Anyway I installed Steam last night! (And ran into an issue playing Dwarf Fortress, classic Linux... but at least I don't have to worry about M$ hijacking my filesystem anymore!)

ulkesh 3y ago
You'll find, as I have, that laptops and Linux distributions/DEs don't always play well together (lid closing/reopening, suspend/hibernate, keyboard backlight, function key alternate media controls, trackpad, etc). It's sometimes a shot in the dark if not buying from a company that helps guarantee Linux support/compatibility for all the hardware in the system (Dell XPS 13 plus developer, System 76, etc). That's great there was a tutorial that got everything working well, especially for your specific setup! I'm also now running Linux as my only operating system on my gaming desktop machine (I run Arch, btw ;D ). Steam/Proton and Lutris make gaming a relative cinch now, and I've been hoping for this since I first started with Linux in 1999. Edit>> Words are hard.

shpx 3y ago

Steam is the worst application on macOS I use. It can't even scroll the game collection at 60fps and when I launch a game without Steam open I need wait 15 seconds to see the actual game's loading screen or 30+ if Steam decides to update. It's so slow that if you told me it's emulating an entire Windows environment, I would believe you. It's just an application launcher, a glorified Start menu. I would never choose to use it, it's forced on me because of the Steam store.

nologic01 3y ago

it would be cool if indie / open source game development would make linux more attractive to a wider population of gamers. with the cloudification of everything they are one of the few remaining demographics that values serious "local" hardware. but the nature of compute intensive modern game development seems so extremely large budget that such a grassroots efforts stand little chance. the linux desktop definitely feels like waiting for godot [1] :-) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_Godot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_Godot

jonathantf2 3y ago

Steam on macOS is soooooooooooo slow, the only reason I have it is for Steam Chat and even with just that open it's extremely laggy.

liotier 3y ago

With the Proton compatibility layer, the Microsoft Windows versions of Battlebit, Squad and Warno perform perfectly on Debian - I don't even think about it. Steam gaming on Linux Just Works !

reilly3000 3y ago

It’s worth noting that Steam gaming on M1+ chips is nearly impossible. My library of hundreds of games yielded only a dozen titles that were playable, compared with about 20% of my library that runs on my Intel Mac. Publishers simply couldn’t care less about supporting Apple Silicon outside of a handful of mostly casual indie games. For as wonderful as Steam gaming on Linux has become, the Mac side has seemed to regress in equal measure.

gunapologist99 3y ago
Probably at least in part by design, as with everything else in MacWorld.. how is Apple well served by allowing a competing app store that's dominant in gaming?
aalimov_ 3y ago
Not really the case anymore. If you set up Apple Game Porting Toolkit, or download one of the several GUIs for it.
hypercube33 3y ago
Also to note a majority that do support Intel macs are 32 bit so don't run on modern mac osx
hombre_fatal 3y ago
I play games on Windows via Parallels. Doesn’t really matter to me when games are Mac native or not, they are just an alt-tab away.
rmuratov 3y ago
I believe it's the opposite - more publishers will consider porting to Mac. Previously, you could only play on desktop Macs with a discrete graphics card. But now there is a M1 Macbook with powerful graphics out of the box. And the install base is pretty big. But it only will happen with the help from Apple. We already see the first attempts - Death Stranding will be available natively on M1 Macs.
- ric2b 3y ago

sgjohnson 3y ago

Only now? Considering how Apple has neglected gaming, and especially considering that most Mac games on Steam are 32-bit, which no macOS version released within the past 4 years can even run? And 42% of that is Steam Deck... It's a little bit disappointing, to be honest.

1583 3y ago

mac isnt for gaming

yndoendo 3y ago

You have to pay me to use Windows and macOS. After speeding years using both products, I don't want to use them any more unless I'm getting paid. I personally do not need any software that is tied to either platform. Professional, depends on what needs to be done. Not all have this view and nor most will. Hard-core gamer will most likely keeping on Windows unless developers and distributors change their ways. Some people buy a computer because of the OS it is running and they need select applications to run. Most only need a web browser and it does not matter what OS they run, often it is the least expensive laptop. Something that has a bigger screen than a smart-phone. Windows backwards capability is also limited. Gaming: never was able to get Slave Zero running on a Windows XP box, only Win98. Development: had to ignore the input event system Microsoft designed for WinForms and WPF, using Win32 message pump directly, because of faulty drivers and new features breaking backward capability.