This, once again, misses the elephant in the room.

The fact is simple, there isn't enough of a Mac gaming market for the game developers to go through the effort.

The hardware has been good enough for a while now.

I'm not saying this will never change but the developers that shipped games on PC and Mac report something along the lines of 6-11% of users use a Mac. That isn't worth the effort unless you have a very strong IP and you've already targeted the switch2, the PS5 and XBox.

▲ SXX an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Easy fix. Apple can just stop breaking compatibility and partner with Valve to port Proton support to Mac.

But they wont do it because they want to push their own walled garden. And obviously no one will support it because macOS market share is smaller than Linux market share.

	▲	sunaookami a minute ago \| parent [-]
		>macOS market share is smaller than Linux market share Not true? macOS has like 12-14% and Linux 3-4%

▲ numpad0 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's not the elephant in the room. The elephant in the room for gaming on Mac is Apple's policy non-commitment to traditional gaming. Technical support for non-gambling gaming is just a checkbox item to them for mandatory 45-second segments in product launches. That transcends into their customers and develop into various gaming and Mac related chicken and egg problems.

▲ fortedoesnthack an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Personally I would gladly switch to mac as my actual personal PC if games ran well on it.

▲ ido an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

    That isn't worth the effort

Maybe I'm too unambitious as a small indie, but "porting" my game to mac merely requires building that target (I use unity & have both mac and windows automated building scripts - I press a button and it builds and uploads both to steam). There's nowhere in my codebase where I had to specifically adapt to one or the other.

▲ matthewmacleod 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Isn’t the point that significantly reducing the effort required changes the “is it worth it” equation?

▲ Nursie 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don't get this attitude.

It'll never be enough until it is. Making porting lower-effort and higher performance can only help.

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AnthonyMouse an hour ago | parent [-]

Apple is getting kind of a PR problem with developers. In theory they don't do all the same things on Mac as they do on iOS, but as long as they continue to do them on iOS and keep feature creeping the gatekeeper stuff, people are hesitant to end up stuck with Apple taking 30% of their revenue or denying their app for opaque reasons after they've spent big money to develop it.

At which point who is going to spend development resources helping the platform of the company they're most afraid of screwing them if it becomes more popular? Half the reason more game developers are targeting Linux is a hedge against Microsoft doing that sort of thing, and Apple is on the opposite side of where they want to move.

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danaris 44 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

This idea that Apple has been plotting this whole time to turn the Mac into iOS, in terms of limiting the software you can run to their own App Store, is a tired meme that makes zero sense given what we've seen from Apple in the past...checks...19 years.

Like, seriously, do you think they need longer than that to do it if it's really what they plan?

If they were ever going to do it, it would've been when they switched to Apple Silicon chips, and...they didn't!

Perpetuating the idea does no one any favors. It's just pointless paranoia.

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puelocesar an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

That really doesn’t make any sense. Do you really think Apple will ban steam on macOS overnight?

	▲	AnthonyMouse an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		That's not how you boil a frog. If it gets popular enough then they start trying to get games to use their app store instead of Steam, gradually make it easier to use that and harder to use anything else, then the gate closes only after the herd is where they want it. Better, then, if it never gets popular enough to begin with.
	▲	tick_tock_tick an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Nah there will be a new model and a new OS version on it that will only lets you use the App Store (30% tax of course). People here will complain and a fuck ton of people will dick ride Apple with bullshit about how they shouldn't buy that new laptop and they should feel privileged for Apple allowing any money to go to the person actually providing you value.