Valve Says Counter-Strike 2 for macOS Not Happening Because There Aren't Enough Players on Mac to Justify It
Valve Says Counter-Strike 2 for macOS Not Happening Because There Aren't Enough Players on Mac to Justify It
https://www.macrumors.com/2023/10/10/valve-confirms-counter-strike-2-no-macos/
Valve on Monday said it has no plans for a macOS version of the recently released game Counter-Strike 2, the follow-up title replacing the hugely...
Apple: only implements a proprietary graphics API
Also Apple: Why does no one make games for my platform??
Luckily it plays on Apple Silicon Macs beautifully through CrossOver. In the MacGaming sub users are getting 100+fps.
It does, but Valve doesn't spend money in taking any responsibility over it. Also I presume anticheat might not work properly.
In any scenario, the translation layer has a performance impact which for any competitive player is something that makes Apple a no-go.
Actually, they kinda do take responsibility for mac gaming. They helped develop https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK which basically runs Vulkan on Metal. The Linux version uses Vulkan, so in theory it shouldn't be too hard to port, they just didn't.
Because, again, they don't want bad press when the translation layer doesn't play ball with anticheat, or some other tech.
That's funny because my son compared CS2 on my MacBook Pro vs his RTX 3060 PC build we put together last winter and he said how much more responsive the game felt on the Mac.
That it works is one thing. That it always works as expected is another. Apple doesn't want to take responsibility for that, and neither does Valve, when there's not enough paying customers on that platform. It is what it is. Now the Proton layer is one thing, because Valve is selling Steam Decks. They will want that to become a big thing. They'll go back to selling Steam Boxes (the living room console thing).
If Apple wants to ride that wave, they could.
Yes, CodeWeavers takes responsibility, Crossover is their product. Same company that originally created Proton for Valve. Solid product.
CS:GO had anticheat and was on Mac for ages. Granted they updated it to Live, but the underlying principles of design are still the same.
No you’re wrong. MP works just fine in CS2.
No need to have a meltdown because Mac users are enjoying the game too. lol.
We were discussing who supports the product. But interestingly CodeWeavers is responsible for over two-thirds of all commits to Wine, and the company also employs Wine's primary maintainer, Alexandre Julliard, as its CTO.
They ship an outdated and unreliable implementation 😅 There are things that use it, but my understanding is you couldn't use it in the same way you can on other platforms.
Is it not still maintained and the simplest graphics API available of the big three?
I learned that OpenGL is no longer maintained on Mac. I understand it's on a might work but no guarantee status and no help if it breaks.
So...how long before Apple realizes that game devs are notoriously time-crunched and forcing them to target yet another proprietary graphics API is a stupid move for their gaming ambitions?
I'm not convinced they'll ever realize the problem with their strategy. They'll keep half-assing it every couple of years and wondering why they don't have a larger gaming audience.
It's because they're addicted to their walled gardens. Everything within Apple's ecosystem must be tightly overseen and controlled, with little exception.
Yeah, they keep trying to bring their walled-garden approach to gaming and it just won't work. It's like trying to build another console in the current gaming market and unrealistically expecting it to take off.
It's also why I think the Vision Pro, despite how cool and innovative the tech might be, is also DOA.
It's because implementing Vulkan means losing some litigation routes against Valve, Microsoft, etc (Vulkan has patent protected bits that you'd necessarily infringe by implementing it).
That's it.
Was CS:GO available natively on Mac? If so, this is unfortunate news for the small subset of Mac users who played, since CS:GO is now no more.
Available, yes. Playable, greatly depends on how much GPU you bought with your Mac.
Most AMD cards work just fine in an external GPU enclosure (or in a PCIe slot on the Mac Pro)
I heard they’re offering refunds to any users who had the majority of playtime on MacOS although I’m not sure that means much for an esports title
Whoopie got mad and called out Blizzard for not releasing Diablo 4 on Mac. I think it was on tiktok.
"This is what I’m asking you, Blizzard Entertainment,” Goldberg said, “This is Whoopi. You know how much I love Diablo. I would like y’all to let those of us who use our [Macs] to play. Allow us to play on the Apple. Take Diablo IV and let us do it and have a great time.”
https://kotaku.com/diablo-4-iv-for-mac-whoopi-goldberg-upset-blizzard-port-1850519443
This is hilarious to me for some reason. Like, goddamn Whoopi Goldberg loves Diablo so much (and on a Mac no less) that she went and called them out on a public tiktok?
That's awesome.
I imagine the time it takes to get used to Windows/Linux would be more effort than spending the cost of a gaming PC
Honestly? Kinda hate cs2. It runs worse (3080ti btw), most of my smoke grenades no longer work, they removed team deathmatch, they removed short competitive matches, and you can no longer play csgo. The more I play the less I'm a fan
I get the feeling it was pushed out before everything was ready. I am willing to bet that all these missing features are coming later. Not sure why they didn't just wait before pushing out the game. The smokes are just different, players just need to adapt to new mechanics instead of using the same grenade tactics that they've memorized for years.
Yeah they haven't confirmed whether these features are making it back I believe, but they really ought to and I expect they will too. Smokes Im fine with. Mostly just annoying since the game feels almost identical to GO. A lot of smokes still work too so it's kinda trial and error to find which ones work now and dont.
I also find it annoying I can no longer see how much I damaged an enemy via console, but that's fair enough too.
The fact that CS2 feels, looks and plays the same as GO did was the biggest aim by valve and wish from players. This was the goal: Redo the game in a new engine. Thats what they did. We can argue if there are inportant features missing or not, but the same feel but reworked smokes is both a feature which most of dedicated players wished for
I am in that camp, honestly! I just miss my old features and there are some quirks and growing pains. I really miss most of all short competitive. It was much lower stress and commitment. I can only play so many games and to be stuck in a one-sided long one feels bad. I am just a bit underwhelmed overall, but perhaps it is my expectations.
You can still play go if you want, there's a beta called "csgo demo viewer" that can connect to community servers.
Huh, I thought this was an entirely different game... is this a similar scenario of what happened with the Warcraft III remake?
It's on a new engine and is technically a new game but Valve overwrote cs:go to make the inventory changeover work afaik. Lots of people seem to not know about the beta option to play GO, I think Valve should make a better process to access it so more people know that it's an option.
Well now that I think about it, I never played CS GO on this laptop, so I have nothing to compare against.
I would say it runs "fine". Just far worse than such a visually unimpressive game should (I don't play cs for graphics anyway). The whole release feels like a dud. Feels like they pulled an Overwatch 2:
Replace the old game, remove a ton of stuff people liked (at least I liked). I'll still play - it's not terrible - but it feels lacking
3080ti here at 3440x1440 and I don't think I've ever dipped below 150 FPS, and whenever I look it's in the mid 200's
I think much missing stuff is going to be coming. I think they just didn't want to delay CS2 any longer. CSGO is still playable from the properties panel. You can enable a legacy CSGO mode. Not sure about matchmaking though.
On my 3060ti with max everything I always have over 200 fps, but yes, definitely not as fast as CSGO still. What fps are you getting?
It seems odd not to have TDM from the outset. I somehow doubt turning off team damage or shortening the match length requires a huge dev lift. Maybe some surrounding infrastructure but still. On the FPS, I'll have to check! It feels like a lot lower than 200. I only have 144hz anyway so it must be worse than that
I think everyone would rather development effort for games go into Linux as opposed to macOS.
As a Mac user, I’m fine with this tbh. I don’t game on my Mac and most people I know with one don’t either.
As a user of an ecosystem that I care about, I totally do not. Why should the health of an ecosystem be dictated by my usage patterns or that of people that I know? Bit self-centered, also?
Also, today’s Apple fans and their “Apple-no-gaming” fiction are too quick to “forget” Bungie and how upset Steve Jobs was when Halo became Microsoft-exclusive. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2010/10/jobs-turned-down-bungie-at-first-how-microsoft-burned-apple/
Wow you guys hate apple more than I do and I really think they're overpriced but okay hard and software for people with other needs. The apple users I know don't really think about gaming at all, wondering how many seriously do.
The hatred has nothing to do with the products but the lack of participation in open standards like OpenGL or Vulkan.
Their products are incredibly well made (though I'd fuckin hope so given the pricing) and their software experience (barring the lack of good graphics API support) is quite nice.
Really just repackaged Proton, with some ridiculous install requirements including fucking Homebrew.
It's not even Alpha level software right now. But, just to argue their side: it is meant as a preview for game developers to package their games with right now, and not the general public.
Still... Fucking Homebrew.
Okay but it's like, what other package managers exist on MacOS?
Obviously they're going to include Homebrew to fulfill dependencies in a more curated way than just bringing them down with the installer itself.
I guess I don't really like the idea of a large company using a tool like Homebrew, I feel at that point they should write/include their own package manager.
I might be sounding pedantic, so feel free to ignore me if you're a Homebrew fan, but it just irks me that the package manager is installed via curl'ing a shell script from their github project, and that the entire repo itself is stored on Github.
Even Microsoft has winget; dunno why a company the size of Apple can't just roll a proper, secure way to distribute packages.
Also, as far as other package managers go, there's Macports.
They have a proper, secure way to distribute packages - the app store. It just happens to be a GUI solution and not a CLI one.
Sure, exactly. So why do I need to install a third party CLI package manager for a first party suite of tools?
Like, xcode-select is able to grab dependencies. There's no reason why a similar binary can't be delivered with the porting sdk.
There's MacPorts but Homebrew is by far the most common package manager on MacOS. I wouldn't use Homebrew on Linux personally but it's great on Mac
The one that explicitly states in its license that you're not allowed to ship anything using it?
just install windows-version of steam, and a windows-version of CS:2, same way wine on linux works for blizzard launcher
It's meant more to help developers with their porting efforts though, not really meant for normal users like Valve's doing with Proton.
Wine is available for Mac, and Apple has started work on their game toolkit which was shown to run cyberpunk (albeit not well)
So yeah, but you're probably better off just dual booting asahi tbh.
Does Asahi have full support for the GPU yet? Would Proton work on a non-x86-x64 architecture? Last time I tried it (around 6 months back, been a minute) it worked great for anything that didn't need acceleration but I didn't think it could handle much more.
Let's be real. You don't HAVE to buy the loot boxes lmao. It's not like they make you any better as a player.
CS skins are practically pay to lose thinking about it. They make you stand out against the map more.
That's how I think of cosmetics in most MP games as well haha. They're immersion breaking.
And you don't HAVE to go inside a casino, and you don't HAVE to try a cigarette, and so on. Those are still predatory and addicting things.
...so is gaming in general. What's your point?
My point is that they're just cosmetic, unlike gacha games or other free to play games where you're FORCED to buy loot boxes to unlock good weapons and items.
A casino REQUIRES you to spend money in order to participate. CS2 does not. Big difference.
My point is that loot boxes can be a predatory, purposely addicting nightmare regardless of being mandatory to play or not.
That's how it works on most games that also feature loot boxes or similar content, you don't need Fortnite bucks to win. However, when every developer does it the community complains endlessly - when Valve does it, it's okay because they're the good guys I guess?
That’s how it works on most games
Not really. A bunch of F2P games have lootboxes that give you a chance at better weapons / characters early on instead of going through a long grind. The set of CS weapons is the same and does not change.
The community gets upset when it becomes pay-to-win. I wouldn't consider CS to be pay-to-win though so I find the casino comparison a bit inaccurate.
It's not pay to win. But I never argued it was, so I'm not sure why you're debating this point as if I were.
The third party market for skins, with systems designed to literally be a casino, was not only allowed but encouraged on CS as it did make a lot of money.
But I never argued it was
You're the one who brought up the idea that the game is a casino. A casino is pay-to-win, because you literally have to pay money to participate and having more money gives you advantages.
This is not what CS is. You don't have to pay money to participate and there are no upgrades weapons or characters as a result of paying more money.
I haven't checked in on Counter-Strike in a long time, but we can and should call out shitty business practices designed to exploit gambling addiction to make you play when you don't want to. I'm not equipped to assess whether CS is designed that way, but gaming in general is not predatory and addicting in this way.
assess whether CS is designed that way
It isn't. There's no grind to get better weapons so that you can remain competitive with other players and no paid lootboxes that give you an early advantage. You start out with the standard set of weapons just like any other player and that never changes. The only addicting thing about the boxes in CS2 is that they look cool but I'd say that that's more on the player to decide whether they want it or not.
It's like saying providing the ability to paint your car is an addicting business practice, which I don't really buy. This is not the same as pay-to-win and the distinction should be made here.
You get no advantage from the battle passes in Street Fighter 6 either, but they're still designed in such a way to keep you chasing the rewards. It can be scummy without being pay to win. But again, I don't know what hooks CS2 has. Last I played CS:GO was when it was $15 and had no microtransactions.
But because they have no impact on the gameplay, the onus is entirely on the player whether they want it or not. At this point you're basically saying that they made the battlepasses and lootboxes interesting and therefore they're bad
Same is true for many other games that get shit for their Microtransactions. But Valve is on the "good guy" site, so rules don't apply the same.
Will there be any new Macs really? Isnt everything just some iPhone/ipad with iOS soonish? I doubt macs have any relevance in the future - just like last time when there was no Steve Jobs around. I mean there arent really any apps even for their watch.... So why bother? Maybe they can just usw some cloudgaming ...Apple ppl love paying and subscriptions.
lol MacBooks are insanely good with the release of the M chips, this opinion you’re sporting is pretty dated.
Maybe. But who needs it? I say nobody. The poor Photoshop and illu guys are already getting replaced. There is no need for osx so there is no need for desktop Macs and macbooks will run IOS and be nothing but a superpowerd ipad. Innovation with Apple is zero - they the money to do a new chip but nobody devs anymore for the iwatch since the idea how Apple wants to make business is pretty dated.
Meta app on iwatch ...lol. 90s are calling and they want Apple back in the grave i hear. Or maybe Bill Gates can help them AGAIN?
That makes sense but I assumed that since it’s also on Linux, it would be a 0 effort port
In the earlier days of OS X this was true. A port from one to the other was somewhat trivial. However, Apple has done Apple things and tried to invent their own gaming library API after killing off OpenGL support on Macs and they've probably been up to some other buggery since then as well. Porting to Mac is probably equally as difficult from Windows now as Linux, and Linux has overtaken them on number of people who are playing on Steam.
They still have some pretty old version of OpenGL and Metal was a bit before Vulkan, so it’s sort of a lightning vs USB C situation.
I don’t believe that it was easy. Since it started macOS was based on BSD, not Linux, which is quite different. They also use different types of binaries and the similarities between kernels should end beyond the BSD compatibility layer. See https://wiki.freebsd.org/Myths#FreeBSD_is_Just_macOS_Without_the_Good_Bits
Games have never been “trivial” to port to Mac, why do you think there are so few games that have been ported? Unless you write it for macOS, it’s just not easy or even worth it to port, has been since the Apple II days.
I meant the trivial portion would be porting back and forth between linux and early Mac OSX, making it a two-for-one proposition (though back then a lot of companies still chose not to do the linux port).
OSX was BSD based as well. Mac OS 9 and before were proprietary OSes. I don’t remember what the graphics underpinnings were, but I do know that porting directx to system 8.6 was a gargantuan task and the Mac ports were always 1-2 years behind pc.
macOS is BSD based, not Linux based. Different graphics underpinnings as well. Apple has released some helper layers to assist in porting, but it’s still no cakewalk.
Isn't the Linux version just the windows version running with the usual compatibility layers (proton or whatever)? In other words, not an actual port?
The Linux version of cs:go had native logic and wrapped rendering via valve's ToGL from before proton. CS2 is fully native though.
This is far from a black and white answer. A lot of the first gen steam machine 'ports', including those from Valve, Aspyr, Feral and Virtual Programming used source code level wrapper libraries to convert D3D calls to OpenGL. This added a little bit of extra overhead to the port so a lot of these early ports suffered a little slower performance (in my opinion an average of about 15% slower). These ports were compiled from source code so they were still native ports, if a little half-assed for time and manpower's sake. As time went on Valve and VP's wrappers improved to the point that you could get 1:1 performance or sometimes much better performance running the port under linux (for example VP's wrapper would multi-thread the renderer even if the original D3D renderer was singled-threaded). Feral went on to re-code a handful of their later ports from D3D to Vulkan, again, achieving better performance under linux. A few game engines were written with linux in mind from the start, such as The Talos Principle/Serious Sam 3, and those titles, in my opinion, would be best to use to compare the relative performance of the two OS's at that time.
Nowadays you still have a fair amount of indie titles coming out with native linux support. Not many larger titles in recent years, but you do still get some such as Psychonauts 2 and stuff from Paradox. Proton has gotten so good now that many games will run better on linux from day 1 than on Windows-steal-yo-data-11.
It would be, if you use macOS on an intel CPU with an AMD GPU.
But porting it to an entirely different CPU and GPU architecture with entirely different graphics API (Metal) makes no sense whatsoever.
It could be a 0 effort port but there will be a ton of working fixing issues and making sure it works on new OS versions etc