Valve Says Counter-Strike 2 for macOS Not Happening Because There Aren't Enough Players on Mac to Justify It (2025)

Tuesday October 10, 2023 4:14 am PDT by Tim Hardwick

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 popular FPS Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

Valve confirmed its decision and gave its reasons in a newly published Steam support FAQ:

As technology advances, we have made the difficult decision to discontinue support for older hardware, including DirectX 9 and 32-bit operating systems. Similarly, we will no longer support macOS. Combined, these represented less than one percent of active CS:GO players.
Moving forward, Counter-Strike 2 will exclusively support 64-bit Windows and Linux.

Last month's release of Counter-Strike 2 forced a 26GB update for everyone with CS:GO, including Mac users, but after installation those on macOS soon discovered that the update makes the original game as well as the update unplayable because of the lack of support and no rollback option.

Valve now says Mac players will be eligible for a Prime Status Upgrade refund if most of their CS:GO playtime was on macOS and they played CS:GO on a Mac between the announcement of the Counter-Strike 2 Limited Test (March 22, 2023) and the launch of Counter-Strike 2 (September 27, 2023), regardless of when they purchased their Prime Status Upgrade. Valve will offer the refunds until December 1, 2023.

Valve added that those who wish to continue playing CS:GO on macOS will be able to access a legacy version or "frozen build" of the game, which has all the features of CS:GO except for official matchmaking. Support for this version of CS:GO will end on January 1, 2024. After this date, the game will still be available, but certain functionality that relies on compatibility with the Game Coordinator (e.g., access to inventory) may degrade and/or fail, according to Valve.

Despite Valve's refund offer to Mac users, the news that a macOS version of Counter-Strike 2 is not in active development will come as a bitter blow to many players. Though CS:GO launched all the way back in 2012, it's still one of the most popular FPS games available today, with tens of millions of players logging in each month. So even if less than 1 percent of the user base is on Mac, that could still account for hundreds of thousands of players.

Regardless of numbers, one of the reasons Valve is reluctant to develop CS2 for Mac is that Apple devices do not provide native support for the Vulkan API that the game is based on. Vulkan was designed to succeed OpenGL and address some of the latter's shortcomings, and while there is an open-source library called MoltenVK that provides a Vulkan implementation on top of Apple's Metal graphics API, it still lacks some of Vulkan's advanced features.

Tag: Valve

[ 233 comments ]

Top Rated Comments

apocalyarts

15 months ago

I said it before and I say it again: Apple needs to pay up and explicitly fund the ports for specific marquee titles in order for mac gaming to take off. Doesn't matter which M1234 chips they have or how many game porting toolkits they develop.

This train will not leave the station, if Apple doesn't throw the coal into the engine themselves.

Score: 36 Votes (Like | Disagree)

ivayle

15 months ago

Imagine being Valve making millions of dollars per month for selling skins in Counter Strike.

Now imagine again being Valve creating a new version of Counter Strike (still a half baked product btw) not willing to support a brand new trend in processors and gpu power because the old statistics say only 1% of players use macOS.

Let be honest the macOS version of CS:GO sucked in the past, but also the hardware it was running on.

This was a perfect opportunity to gain macOS gaming momentum for Counter Strike (new hardware and new version of the game) and they decided to throw it away... to save money.

Score: 24 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Kraszim

15 months ago

You can expect this to continue happening for as long as Apple pushes Metal and refuses to support Vulkan. People are not going to design desktop class games around API that has single platform use. Blizzard did the same thing, with dropping macOS support in their newest titles, although they for now keep the old ones working. If macOS wants to get anywhere is desktop game support it has to be a case "why not support it" instead of "we need to make a Metal compatible version of our engine".

Score: 19 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Zc456

15 months ago

Now that they have their own console, they have even less of a motivation.

Score: 15 Votes (Like | Disagree)

MayaUser

15 months ago

Lets make a petition here...to save this...lets find 500 players

Score: 13 Votes (Like | Disagree)

H2SO4

15 months ago

Apple is now trying to get as many gamers and game developers to switch to Mac and now this? Valve not allowing Mac users to play the game because there are not enough users to support?
I've played Counter-Strike back when it was just a mod of Half-Life and I was only a Windows user back then... I have stopped playing computer or mobile games for about 20 years now but there are a few titles that I would still want to play whenever I have time... Counter-Strike 1.3, Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto Vice City, Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, Need for Speed Underground 2, Need for Speed Most Wanted (2005) just to name a few...

You think that them encouraging gamers no after decades of not caring is supposed to make them all switch immediately? They will be looking at Apples track record of not caring, asking themselves if they will suddenly decide not to support a specific GPU, (ahem....), and such like and making a decision based on this.
I don't blame Valve.
I gave up on Mac gaming ages ago. I wanted to but was too hit and miss.

Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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Valve Says Counter-Strike 2 for macOS Not Happening Because There Aren't Enough Players on Mac to Justify It (2025)

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