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> Are there many games played today Most of Valve's own games are (still!) 32-bit only on macOS, including all of the Half-Life games, both Portals, Left 4 Dea

> Are there many games played today Most of Valve's own games are (still!) 32-bit only on macOS, including all of the Half-Life games, both Portals, Left 4 Dead, and Team Fortress 2. The only major game of theirs which is available for 64-bit macOS is Dota 2. (Underlords and Artifact were both market failures, so I'm ignoring them.) Really, the way Valve has handled the 64-bit transition on macOS has been pretty terrible. Up until today, their recommended "solution" for running 32-bit games was for users to downgrade to Mojave or install Windows through Boot Camp. (Never mind that neither of these is an option for users with newer computers.)

sosodev 3y ago
Right? I know Mac users are a fraction of the market but recompiling nothing almost seems petty.
- duskwuff 3y ago
  They even did a bunch of work on Half-Life recently for its 25th anniversary [1], including adding Steam Deck support and fixing long-standing bugs -- but that didn't extend to making it run on any modern macOS system. [1]: https://www.half-life.com/en/halflife25/ https://www.half-life.com/en/halflife25/
appplication 3y ago
I’ve been wanting to play portal 2 for years but I’m astounded Valve is unwilling to prioritize the relatively low amount of work it would take to compile to 64-bit.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- MindSpunk 3y ago
  It's really not as simple as recompiling with 64bit. There are likely numerous assumptions of a 32 bit system all over the codebase that would take weeks of engineer time to attempt to understand the scope of let alone fix. Casting pointers through int, tightly bit packed structs or a number of other little things. The work has been done on newer versions of source sure, but that leaves you with two bad options. Spend lots of man hours back porting to a dead engine branch for every single game or port those old games on to new engine versions and spend even more man hours trying to update incompatible bits and hope you haven't introduced new bugs everywhere. Not even close to worth the time for a tiny percentage of gamers for games that were released 10+ years ago.

sosodev 3y ago

Right? I know Mac users are a fraction of the market but recompiling nothing almost seems petty.

duskwuff 3y ago
They even did a bunch of work on Half-Life recently for its 25th anniversary [1], including adding Steam Deck support and fixing long-standing bugs -- but that didn't extend to making it run on any modern macOS system. [1]: https://www.half-life.com/en/halflife25/ https://www.half-life.com/en/halflife25/

appplication 3y ago

I’ve been wanting to play portal 2 for years but I’m astounded Valve is unwilling to prioritize the relatively low amount of work it would take to compile to 64-bit.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
MindSpunk 3y ago
It's really not as simple as recompiling with 64bit. There are likely numerous assumptions of a 32 bit system all over the codebase that would take weeks of engineer time to attempt to understand the scope of let alone fix. Casting pointers through int, tightly bit packed structs or a number of other little things. The work has been done on newer versions of source sure, but that leaves you with two bad options. Spend lots of man hours back porting to a dead engine branch for every single game or port those old games on to new engine versions and spend even more man hours trying to update incompatible bits and hope you haven't introduced new bugs everywhere. Not even close to worth the time for a tiny percentage of gamers for games that were released 10+ years ago.