In the same week that Apple announced huge improvements for gaming on macOS Sequoia at WWDC, game developer Valve removed support for the platform from many of its games.
According to SteamDB, which is a database for Valve’s Steam storefront, Valve released a patch for a number of its games on June 12 that removed macOS support. Axed games uncovered by iMore so far include:
- Counterstrike: Source
- Day of Defeat: Source
- Half-Life 2
- Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
- Half-Life Episode 1
- Half-Life Episode 2
- Portal
- Portal 2
- Left for Dead 2
While more recent Valve titles, such as Counter-Strike 2 didn’t ship with Mac support, a couple of games, such as the original Counter-Strike and DOTA 2, have retained macOS functionality, suggesting this isn’t a blanket decision.
Way back in May 2010, Valve announced it was bringing Steam and a few of its games to the Mac. Over the years, titles like Portal 2 and DOTA 2 were simultaneously released on Windows and Mac. However, when Apple announced its silicon chip transition for Macs in 2020, Valve’s silence on whether Steam would support the M1 chip was very noticeable.
With the company now dropping support for the Mac, we now have our answer. iMore has reached out to Valve for comment as to why this decision has been made.
Thanks to Game Porting Kit, you can still play these games
Just because Valve has dropped macOS support from its entire library of games doesn’t mean it’s impossible to play them on your Mac. The 2023 release of Game Porting Toolkit (GPTK) is a framework by Apple to help developers port their games to the Mac. Apps like Whisky take advantage of this framework, allowing users to download Windows versions of Steam and play their purchased games on the Mac, all powered by GPTK.
This means you can download Valve’s library of games, still available on Windows, but on an Apple silicon Mac and play them as you would have on an Intel Mac. Although we hope that Valve changes its mind to natively support macOS in the future, using apps like Whisky is a great solution in the meantime. GPTK 2, unveiled at WWDC 2024, takes the GPTK framework to the next level and has unlocked playing some hefty titles on Mac including Returnal, Uncharted, and other AAA PS5 titles.
