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I didn't expect Linux to be above macOS despite Wine's awesomeness. - Windows 94.84% - Linux 3.05% - macOS 2.11%

by hu3 1y ago

nurettin 1y ago
There is wide spread disrespect against people who play games on mac. It is a running meme.
anothernewdude 1y ago
So few games support macOS that it is a real pain to find games to play on it.
- Joel_Mckay 1y ago
  If you have a MacOS ARM system, than emulating old slow games can work: https://github.com/86Box/86Box/releases https://github.com/86Box/86Box/releases For some, it is the only real legal option given windows 11 licensing. Apple M3/M4 are a great chip, but they EOL the hardware ecosystem every 12 years on average. Few companies can tolerate that level of development liability, and Apple users benefit from the FOSS ecosystems cross-platform efforts. =3
candiddevmike 1y ago
Wonder what will happen with that percentage once they sunset Rosetta. I think steam has a native client, but the Mac support for most/all games is x86 based AFAIK.
- p_ing 1y ago
  Rosetta is supposed to stock around for game compatibility only.
fainpul 1y ago
macOS is by far the worst gaming platform. I think most macOS users are fully aware of that.
- PeaceTed 1y ago
  I mean by this point it should be expected. Apple hasn't really backed gaming in meaningful way since the original Mac in 1984.
  - _cenw 1y ago
    Releasing Game Porting Toolkit aimed at developers wanting to make a quick and dirty shim and not users getting their own windows games working is such typical Apple hubris.
    - jsheard 1y ago
      The Game Porting Toolkit is weird because despite first appearances it doesn't actually help developers make quick ports. Apple built a pretty robust DirectX-to-Metal shim, but they only licensed it for "evaluation purposes", so its only value to developers is in seeing whether their Windows game runs well enough on Macs to be worth porting. If they do decide to port they still have to do it the hard way, they're not allowed to ship Apples shim to users. It's kind of baffling because it does almost nothing to help the game developers that it's ostensibly aimed at, while it does help end-users play unmodified Windows games on their Mac, which Apple doesn't endorse.
- pmarreck 1y ago
  Baldur's Gate 3 looks absolutely fantastic on it due to the HDR rendering and high screen quality on Apple hardware though. It's sad for me as a long-time Mac fan and gaming fan that Apple has always had hardware and OS that was technically superior when it comes to gaming, but neither Jobs nor Cook ever cared about gaming except as a checkbox, so it all went to waste. The amusing thing to me is that so many productive things have come OUT of pursuing gaming, such as graphics cards being useful for mining and then AI.
  - int_19h 1y ago
    The question is, how long it will be working for? My Steam account has numerous games in it that supposedly work on macOS, but not really because they shipped 10+ years ago and weren't updated since. Some don't launch at all. Some do, but with various more-or-less-breaking bugs. Of the remaining ones, many don't advertise hi-DPI support so macOS renders them at 1080p instead of 4K. It desperately needs a stable API for games. Which Proton could provide, except there's also that whole Apple Silicon thing meaning that x64 Windows binaries aren't easily runnable.
TkTech 1y ago
I think part of this is just laptop vs desktop. Everyone I know has a macbook, not a soul I know has a mac desktop. Everyone has either a console or a separate "gaming" desktop.
mariusor 1y ago
Apple really shot themselves in the foot with their insistence on dropping OpenGL and not having an in house Vulkan implementation. Games that want to support macs need to add Metal renderers.
- viktorcode 1y ago
  Seems this kind of comments will keep coming no matter what. Nevertheless, here's some points on the matter: Apple was the company that boosted OpenGL popularity by using it as the graphics API for OS X. In Apple platforms world there's only one graphics API that is guaranteed to work across their hardware, so it was a big deal. However, they could not keep up with OpenGL updates, as they overlapped poorly with their products map, i.e. switching new OS X to newer OpenGL revision would require to drop support for older Macs. Out of that need (and also to address multiple shortcomings of OpenGL) Metal was born. OpenGL support layer was implemented on Metal. Metal was released before Vulkan API was finalised. There was never need for Apple to support Vulkan. Vulkan, as the OpenGL before it, has the same downsides for Apple, but bringing nothing to the table compared to Metal. Very few games have custom written Vulkan rendering pipeline. Majority rely on game engines, and if the engine supports Vulkan rendering, it is almost certain to also supports Metal. So, instead of relying on supporting 3rd party rendering APIs Apple spends resources on helping with porting games to Macs natively.
  - apatheticonion 1y ago
    > So, instead of relying on supporting 3rd party rendering APIs Apple spends resources on helping with porting games to Macs natively. I have been using a MacBook Pro for decades (Linux/Windows PC for gaming). I haven't seen this happening. Apple have, in recent years, sponsored a few triple A titles to add MacOS ports but the vast majority of games don't run or run so poorly it doesn't matter. With CrossOver there are a handful of games that work well, most don't. I tried to play Fallout New Vegas and it wouldn't start. Tried to play Raft with some friends and it didn't start. Borderlands 2/3 didn't start. Democracy 4 started but ran at 2 fps. Some games like EU4 and Dark Souls 1 remastered work pretty well. I ended up buying an ROG Aly because I travel a lot and want a portable gaming experience. I use game streaming to my MacBook to play games - I wouldn't have bought the Ally if my MacBook could just game. IMO - if the Asahi team were able to implement Vulkan with no documentation or references - Apple could do so in a weekend if they so desired. I'd like to see Apple write Windows or Linux drivers for their hardware so we can use official Bootcamp and run games on platforms that care about it.
hamdingers 1y ago
I believe Proton does not/will not be integrated into Steam on Mac because it would compete with CrossOver, the paid product from CodeWeavers that essentially funds Wine development.
- TkTech 1y ago
  I don't really believe this to be an issue - Valve directly contracts CodeWeavers, they developed Proton together, and they've been pretty clear from recent hiring bursts that it was specifically to work on Proton. I have to imagine the income from Valve is exponentially higher than the relative niche of CrossOver. They're basically a subdivision of Valve now.
  - hamdingers 1y ago
    I'm interested in alternate explanations if you have them, to be clear this is only my theory. While Valve might make up a big part of CodeWeavers book of business now, that was not true when the original contract was signed.
    - int_19h 1y ago
      The alternate explanation is that it's rather pointless to integrate it because all new Macs are ARM, and there are basically zero Windows games compiled for ARM.
      - hamdingers 1y ago
        Not likely considering Valve are working on an ARM version of proton in the open, have published test results for x86-64 windows games playing on proton-arm64ec-4, and there are credible leaks that the Steam Frame uses an ARM cpu. If anything Valve is moving towards ARM and taking the library along with it.
        int_19h 1y ago
        Then it will probably happen after they get it polished on Windows.
viktorcode 1y ago
I believe the statistics doesn't count Windows version of Steam games running on Mac via Crossover. And of course Steam is not the only store to purchase games on Mac (in last couple of years bought 2 games via App Store and none via Steam)
dangus 1y ago
This isn’t surprising at all. In this context, “Linux” means “Steam Deck,” which is basically a plug and play console being sold at cost for $300-500. Macs actually run a lot less of the Steam library without doing pretty involved workarounds like hsing CrossOver. Since Valve sells the Steam Deck they put a lot of work into getting Windows games to run on Linux automatically. They didn’t put that effort into the Mac platform.
- wafflemaker 1y ago
  This is actually wrong. According to statistics, Steam deck is less than 30% of all Linux distros. It's all pretty fragmented, with Arch holding the lead at around 10% (after SteamOS of course). Edit: fixed % cos I was way off writing from memory.

I didn't expect Linux to be above macOS despite Wine's awesomeness. - Windows 94.84% - Linux 3.05% - macOS 2.11%

by hu3 1y ago

I didn't expect Linux to be above macOS despite Wine's awesomeness. - Windows 94.84% - Linux 3.05% - macOS 2.11%

nurettin 1y ago

There is wide spread disrespect against people who play games on mac. It is a running meme.

anothernewdude 1y ago

So few games support macOS that it is a real pain to find games to play on it.

Joel_Mckay 1y ago
If you have a MacOS ARM system, than emulating old slow games can work: https://github.com/86Box/86Box/releases https://github.com/86Box/86Box/releases For some, it is the only real legal option given windows 11 licensing. Apple M3/M4 are a great chip, but they EOL the hardware ecosystem every 12 years on average. Few companies can tolerate that level of development liability, and Apple users benefit from the FOSS ecosystems cross-platform efforts. =3

candiddevmike 1y ago

Wonder what will happen with that percentage once they sunset Rosetta. I think steam has a native client, but the Mac support for most/all games is x86 based AFAIK.

p_ing 1y ago
Rosetta is supposed to stock around for game compatibility only.

fainpul 1y ago

macOS is by far the worst gaming platform. I think most macOS users are fully aware of that.

PeaceTed 1y ago
I mean by this point it should be expected. Apple hasn't really backed gaming in meaningful way since the original Mac in 1984.
- _cenw 1y ago
  Releasing Game Porting Toolkit aimed at developers wanting to make a quick and dirty shim and not users getting their own windows games working is such typical Apple hubris.
  - jsheard 1y ago
    The Game Porting Toolkit is weird because despite first appearances it doesn't actually help developers make quick ports. Apple built a pretty robust DirectX-to-Metal shim, but they only licensed it for "evaluation purposes", so its only value to developers is in seeing whether their Windows game runs well enough on Macs to be worth porting. If they do decide to port they still have to do it the hard way, they're not allowed to ship Apples shim to users. It's kind of baffling because it does almost nothing to help the game developers that it's ostensibly aimed at, while it does help end-users play unmodified Windows games on their Mac, which Apple doesn't endorse.
pmarreck 1y ago
Baldur's Gate 3 looks absolutely fantastic on it due to the HDR rendering and high screen quality on Apple hardware though. It's sad for me as a long-time Mac fan and gaming fan that Apple has always had hardware and OS that was technically superior when it comes to gaming, but neither Jobs nor Cook ever cared about gaming except as a checkbox, so it all went to waste. The amusing thing to me is that so many productive things have come OUT of pursuing gaming, such as graphics cards being useful for mining and then AI.
- int_19h 1y ago
  The question is, how long it will be working for? My Steam account has numerous games in it that supposedly work on macOS, but not really because they shipped 10+ years ago and weren't updated since. Some don't launch at all. Some do, but with various more-or-less-breaking bugs. Of the remaining ones, many don't advertise hi-DPI support so macOS renders them at 1080p instead of 4K. It desperately needs a stable API for games. Which Proton could provide, except there's also that whole Apple Silicon thing meaning that x64 Windows binaries aren't easily runnable.

TkTech 1y ago

I think part of this is just laptop vs desktop. Everyone I know has a macbook, not a soul I know has a mac desktop. Everyone has either a console or a separate "gaming" desktop.

mariusor 1y ago

Apple really shot themselves in the foot with their insistence on dropping OpenGL and not having an in house Vulkan implementation. Games that want to support macs need to add Metal renderers.

viktorcode 1y ago
Seems this kind of comments will keep coming no matter what. Nevertheless, here's some points on the matter: Apple was the company that boosted OpenGL popularity by using it as the graphics API for OS X. In Apple platforms world there's only one graphics API that is guaranteed to work across their hardware, so it was a big deal. However, they could not keep up with OpenGL updates, as they overlapped poorly with their products map, i.e. switching new OS X to newer OpenGL revision would require to drop support for older Macs. Out of that need (and also to address multiple shortcomings of OpenGL) Metal was born. OpenGL support layer was implemented on Metal. Metal was released before Vulkan API was finalised. There was never need for Apple to support Vulkan. Vulkan, as the OpenGL before it, has the same downsides for Apple, but bringing nothing to the table compared to Metal. Very few games have custom written Vulkan rendering pipeline. Majority rely on game engines, and if the engine supports Vulkan rendering, it is almost certain to also supports Metal. So, instead of relying on supporting 3rd party rendering APIs Apple spends resources on helping with porting games to Macs natively.
- apatheticonion 1y ago
  > So, instead of relying on supporting 3rd party rendering APIs Apple spends resources on helping with porting games to Macs natively. I have been using a MacBook Pro for decades (Linux/Windows PC for gaming). I haven't seen this happening. Apple have, in recent years, sponsored a few triple A titles to add MacOS ports but the vast majority of games don't run or run so poorly it doesn't matter. With CrossOver there are a handful of games that work well, most don't. I tried to play Fallout New Vegas and it wouldn't start. Tried to play Raft with some friends and it didn't start. Borderlands 2/3 didn't start. Democracy 4 started but ran at 2 fps. Some games like EU4 and Dark Souls 1 remastered work pretty well. I ended up buying an ROG Aly because I travel a lot and want a portable gaming experience. I use game streaming to my MacBook to play games - I wouldn't have bought the Ally if my MacBook could just game. IMO - if the Asahi team were able to implement Vulkan with no documentation or references - Apple could do so in a weekend if they so desired. I'd like to see Apple write Windows or Linux drivers for their hardware so we can use official Bootcamp and run games on platforms that care about it.

hamdingers 1y ago

I believe Proton does not/will not be integrated into Steam on Mac because it would compete with CrossOver, the paid product from CodeWeavers that essentially funds Wine development.

TkTech 1y ago
I don't really believe this to be an issue - Valve directly contracts CodeWeavers, they developed Proton together, and they've been pretty clear from recent hiring bursts that it was specifically to work on Proton. I have to imagine the income from Valve is exponentially higher than the relative niche of CrossOver. They're basically a subdivision of Valve now.
- hamdingers 1y ago
  I'm interested in alternate explanations if you have them, to be clear this is only my theory. While Valve might make up a big part of CodeWeavers book of business now, that was not true when the original contract was signed.
  - int_19h 1y ago
    The alternate explanation is that it's rather pointless to integrate it because all new Macs are ARM, and there are basically zero Windows games compiled for ARM.
    - hamdingers 1y ago
      Not likely considering Valve are working on an ARM version of proton in the open, have published test results for x86-64 windows games playing on proton-arm64ec-4, and there are credible leaks that the Steam Frame uses an ARM cpu. If anything Valve is moving towards ARM and taking the library along with it.
      - int_19h 1y ago
        Then it will probably happen after they get it polished on Windows.

viktorcode 1y ago

I believe the statistics doesn't count Windows version of Steam games running on Mac via Crossover. And of course Steam is not the only store to purchase games on Mac (in last couple of years bought 2 games via App Store and none via Steam)

dangus 1y ago

This isn’t surprising at all. In this context, “Linux” means “Steam Deck,” which is basically a plug and play console being sold at cost for $300-500. Macs actually run a lot less of the Steam library without doing pretty involved workarounds like hsing CrossOver. Since Valve sells the Steam Deck they put a lot of work into getting Windows games to run on Linux automatically. They didn’t put that effort into the Mac platform.

wafflemaker 1y ago
This is actually wrong. According to statistics, Steam deck is less than 30% of all Linux distros. It's all pretty fragmented, with Arch holding the lead at around 10% (after SteamOS of course). Edit: fixed % cos I was way off writing from memory.