this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
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Did Valve do anything after initial Steam and Source game ports? Steam client is in dire condition since forever and it's been years since Catalina dropped support for 32-bit. If they provided 64-bit binaries their games would still be running through Rosetta2 on ARM Macs.
It's also reasonable to expect that at least Steam client would get ARM update 3 years after first M1 Macs even if they didn't support their games anymore since Valve makes money predominantly on their cut of sales.
Not sure what you're getting at, there are Mac games released all the time on Steam and Valve keeps getting their cut. The bare minimum anyone expects is that Steam itself gets ported to ARM because it's a web browser and those do horrendously when ran through Rosetta.
ARM Macs can still play 64-bit Intel games of which there is significant back catalogue and new games are released with ARM binaries even on Steam.
I'm expecting Valve to keep Steam operational since I own plenty of Mac games there. Valve doesn't require anything from Apple to deliver a working storefront.
Yes, that's where 30% cut should go.
I'm not the guy you are replying to, but that is just not how the world works.
According to steam's own survey (https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam?platform=combined) osx (aka mac) users make up a whopping 1.4% of steam's players. Now the question is: is it worth it to put in the work for mac? (work which i might add only works on mac as the apis that work on linux and windows do NOT work properly on mac)
Valve's answer is no. Put simply even though they take 30%, its very clear that mac users do not make up a huge enough user base to put in the work. In other words the costs of mac development might exceed the income they'd get from max players (but this is just speculation, the point is, its very that Valve thinks its not profitable to develop for mac)
Why put in the work for linux then you might ask? Well linux uses the same APIs in most cases as windows (Vulkan, OpenGL, and in case of directx, vulkan can "emulate" directx), so its a lot less work to be compatible with linux than it is with mac. Also Valve owns a console which uses linux as an os, so they do not have to rely on propriatary windows.
Anyway my point is development costs are probably higher than the income they get from mac players.
This discussion started with Valve supposedly making an effort to support Macs. For quite some time now I was speaking about Steam itself. It works but is so shit it's no wonder they're bleeding users before they even buy or launch a game.
If you take 30% of sales it's reasonable to expect you're going to support your platform for a reasonable amount of time. We are still talking about staggering amounts of money even if it's 1.4% user base that probably doesn't purchase as much as Windows users.
With what we know about how Valve is being run internally it's likely that it's just not fun anymore and less profitable than alternatives. Incidentally, this leads to a very Google-like behavior which back in the day led me to drop Android for iOS, which in turn led to getting a Mac.
You don't need to explain why companies do things but if we're here it's worth noting that some companies will burn money to project stability, long term support and to keep options open. They might have some issues but will bank on being a known quality.
Valve is still entirely at mercy of Microsoft which is why they prop up Linux, not because they're nice or very profitable there. That means they could do a rug-pull the moment it becomes inconvenient. Linux has no stable APIs either and it doesn't even attempt ABI stability. Linux support hinges on Proton which left unsupported would deteriorate quickly and with no native versions (which are a pain because API/ABI issues mentioned) it could get where Mac is currently rather quickly.
Apple does weird things constantly but other than insistence on Metal (which can be worked around with MoltenVK which Dota2 does) it sounds that Valve thinks their effort, while profitable, is better spent on things that are more profitable. Fair game to them but as a consumer I will voice my grievances.
And as a reminder, my whole point is that it can't be said that Valve made an effort - it was a one time thing that was quickly left to rot.
I ran Linux on desktop for 10 years. I run a Linux home server. You aren't explaining anything, you're throwing slogans at me. I'm talking about ABI stability and you talk about uptime and recompiling entire OS. Which will eventually break ABI and therefore all proprietary software like video games.