Is Mac gaming officially dead?

[baryon]

So after Catalina dropped all support for 32 bit software, it seems that literally none of my Steam games will run as they are all 32 bit. They run fine under Windows, of course.

I doubt these rather old games will ever get updated to 64 bit, and seeing that Half-Life: Alyx makes no mention of Mac support, it seems to me that neither Apple nor Valve cares about gaming on this platform anymore.

For a brief few years, I thought that maybe this has changed, with VR-ready Macs being released and Valve making the huge effort to port all of their games to the Mac. But now all this has gone to waste.

I'm sad to see these games go, and I don't know what happens to the money I spent on them. I know I could just buy Windows and install it, which is probably what I will do, but it was a nice few years when this wasn't necessary. Seems like things are going backwards, rather than forward, in Apple land.

 

[Spacetime Anomaly]

If you have the disk space, you should try installing Mojave on an APFS volume.

Instructions here

I was unwilling to let Half-Life go too.

 

[baryon]

If you have the disk space, you should try installing Mojave on an APFS volume.

Instructions here

I was unwilling to let Half-Life go too.

Thanks! Can the 16 inch MBP run Mojave though? But I might as well install Windows if I'm dual booting anyway...

 

[sat24]

Thanks! Can the 16 inch MBP run Mojave though? But I might as well install Windows if I'm dual booting anyway...

Nope. This has been asked and the answer has been a big fat no

 

[Spacetime Anomaly]

Thanks! Can the 16 inch MBP run Mojave though? But I might as well install Windows if I'm dual booting anyway...

Seems you can’t. Sorry.

Windows it is then.

 

[iAssimilated]

I know this will not help you @baryon, but this is the primary reason I am still on Mojave, I have a couple of 32bit games I am unwilling to let go of. I can feel your pain though, I would be in the same boat as you if I had to move off Mojave!

What version of Steam are you running? I know one of my games got a 64bit update if I was running Steam beta on Catalina. I updated my Steam client to the beta to try out this port (since I assumed the 64bit version would run better than the 32bit version), but it is only available for people on Catalina.

 

[827538]

If only they would support Vulkan...
You can still pick up a copy of W10 and bootcamp for cheap.

The graphics driver stack for Mac has always sucked.

 

[Ritsuka]

Mac gaming is not dead, there are a lot of new games that are 64bit, and with metal they can get much better performance than before (see Shadow of the Tomb Raider).
Valve 10 years old games? Probably yes.
Some software houses care a bit more about their software (see Blizzard, Starcraft is 64bit and runs on Catalina), Valve can care only about one thing at a given time.

 

[Razeus]

This is why 25% of my drive usage is for Windows 10. With Mac, I get the best of both OS worlds.

 

[Stella]

Mac has never been great at games. Windows offers the best gaming experience out there.

 

[KALLT]

If you play games frequently, I would also consider Windows via Boot Camp. Staying on an older version of macOS is not optimal. Removing the 32-bit libraries is just the first blow to Mac gaming, the second one will the removal of OpenGL support (which has been deprecated since macOS Mojave).

 

[iAssimilated]

If you play games frequently, I would also consider Windows via Boot Camp. Staying on an older version of macOS is not optimal. Removing the 32-bit libraries is just the first blow to Mac gaming, the second one will the removal of OpenGL support (which has been deprecated since macOS Mojave).

Thank you for the advice, but I will give up gaming before I ever move back Windows. That being said, most of my games do have ports for 64bit as well as macOS. Also, most of my games would run just fine with Steam beta/Proton and Linux.

 

[JordanNZ]

If only they would support Vulkan...
You can still pick up a copy of W10 and bootcamp for cheap.

The graphics driver stack for Mac has always sucked.

Well, Vulkan isn't exactly going to be any help with running old 32bit games.
And metal on macOS certainly does not 'suck' as you put it.

 

[827538]

Well, Vulkan isn't exactly going to be any help with running old 32bit games.
And metal on macOS certainly does not 'suck' as you put it.

No but the OpenGL stack sucks.

 

[JordanNZ]

No but the OpenGL stack sucks.

Sure it does. But nothing graphically demanding that's been released in the last couple of years is using OpenGL on macOS anymore.