Apple held its WWDC 2024 showcase on Monday, giving us a first look at what's to come from the latest operating systems like iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, visionOS, and macOS.
An important part of macOS Sequoia's presentation revolved around gaming. While the company has always struggled in this department, it provided updates on the progress being made with its Game Porting Toolkit, alongside unveiling a collection of new games coming to macOS. This list includes:
- Assassin's Creed Shadows
- Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
- Resident Evil 7
- Resident Evil 2
- World of Warcraft: The War Within
- Frostpunk 2
- Palworld
- Sniper Elite 4
- RoboCop: Rogue City
- Control Ultimate Edition
- Wuthering Waves
While it's great to see macOS receiving so many new games, the company cannot seem to get a win without it being weighed down by a loss. As spotted by iMore, Valve pushed a patch for many of its developed games, removing their compatibility with macOS.
macOS just lost several classic Valve games
According to SteamDB, a website that tracks key information for the games on Steam, Valve launched an update on Wednesday for some of its games, (Left 4 Dead is the only exception, as it was updated on Tuesday).
The only change is that macOS was removed from the list of compatible operating systems. This information is visible in a game's update history, so with Portal 2 for example, you can see the details of change list #23944952.
The list of games impacted by this change are:
- Portal
- Portal 2
- Left 4 Dead
- Left 4 Dead 2
- Team Fortress 2
- Counter-Strike: Source
- Half-Life 2
- Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
- Half-Life 2: Episode One
- Half-Life 2: Episode Two
- Day of Defeat: Source
There might be more titles we aren't aware of, but this is the full confirmed list as of now.
There's a common thread between these games that differs from other Valve titles: Each uses the same version of Source Engine. Newer games that run Source Engine 2 (like DotA 2) and older titles using Source Engine Gold (like Counter-Strike) are not affected by this.
It's only been a day since Valve pushed the update, so it could be nothing more than an issue with Source Engine causing these games to suddenly break on Mac, or maybe the company has intentionally dropped support for the operating system.
Regardless, many players will be confused when trying to boot up titles that are still popular today—like Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead 2—only to find that it won't run on their Mac computer.
macOS isn't the only OS being tossed aside, though. Old games that launched pre-Windows 10, including the ones listed above, feature text reading "Starting January 1st, 2024, the Steam Client will only support Windows 10 and later versions."
Even though these games once worked on Windows 7, Vista, and XP, the company made a decisive choice in shifting the minimum requirements of Steam as a whole.
What this means for macOS Sequoia
Last year, macOS Sonoma brought us the Game Porting Toolkit, and Sequoia, its successor, will further improve what this software is capable of. It allows developers to port games with greater ease, and even if something isn't officially supported on macOS devices, it could make running those games far less of a hassle.
In the meantime, it cannot be understated how severe of a loss this is. It may seem like these old Valve games won't matter to most, but when writing this, Team Fortress 2 has 76,935 players online. Even Left 4 Dead 2, which isn't as big, has 21,935 players online at this moment.
As much as I love the games being ported onto Mac, including Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 7, the former has 2,166 concurrent players while the latter has 1,428. These Valve titles are enormous and people still play them several years after launch, and macOS users losing access will stir unrest.
At the very least, Palworld (which has 23,613 concurrent players as of writing) is a massive title and will make many macOS fans happy. Otherwise, we're hoping that Valve's removal of support for these games is merely temporary.
