Steam cuts the cord for legacy Windows and macOS
- Reference: 1732095009
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/11/20/valve_steam_legacy_os/
- Source link:
The [1]client update for Valve Software's gaming service delivers improvements for folks with recent versions of Windows, Linux, and macOS, but for users of older OSes, it's bad news.
The November 2024 Steam update delivers a mixture of wins and losses, depending on what you're running. There are the usual updates to the Chromium browser engine and lots of bug fixes. After quite a while in beta testing, Steam now has a built-in [2]Game Recording feature, which allows players to save sessions and share clips with friends.
[3]
Native Linux games now run in the built-in [4]runtime environment codenamed "Scout." Although Scout is labeled version 1.0, this replaces the older "legacy" Linux client. Native Linux titles run using Scout on SteamOS on the Steam Deck, so this change should improve compatibility on more conventional distros. It can also automatically drop back down to using X11 even if [5]SDL is configured to use Wayland with the [6]SDL_VIDEODRIVER setting .
[7]
[8]
From the start of 2024, Valve officially dropped support for [9]Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 , as well as for [10]macOS 10.13 High Sierra and 10.14 Mojave . The Register [11]reported on the change at the end of 2023, as well as an informed guess as to why: because the underlying Chromium engine was dropping support for these elderly client OSes.
Now it has come to pass. The new version of the Steam client won't install on anything older than Windows 10 or macOS 10.15 Catalina. That means Mac users can't run 32-bit games anymore, as all macOS versions from Catalina onward only run 64-bit binaries.
[12]Valve powers up Arch Linux – because who needs Windows when you have a Steam Deck?
[13]Windows 11 and Linux gain ground among Steam gamers
[14]Valve celebrates New Year by blowing off Steam support for Windows 7 and 8
[15]Steam client drops support on macOS, but adds it on Linux
So if you have a well-specified older Mac, here is another reason to check out [16]Open Core Legacy Patcher . For now, macOS 10.15 Catalina will do but we suspect it won't for long. This version of Steam uses the equivalent to [17]Chrome 126 :
Updated embedded Chromium build in Steam to 126.0.6478.183.
However, versions since Chrome 128 [18]require macOS 11 or newer . For now, Catalina will work – but the next significant Steam update will update Chromium as well, and there's a high probability that that will drop support for 10.15.
So, if you're using OCLP to install a newer macOS, you should probably go directly to Big Sur. In The Reg FOSS desk's testing, we found that Big Sur ran reasonably well on a machine with Intel HD 520 graphics, although the same hardware ran very poorly with macOS 12 Monterey. Unfortunately, the inevitable end is in sight for older Macs.
Get our [19]Tech Resources
[1] https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/4472730495692571025?utm_source=SteamDB
[2] https://store.steampowered.com/gamerecording
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Zz3BVDK4FuHbq-6fef6SyAAAAMw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime
[5] https://libsdl.org/
[6] https://wiki.libsdl.org/SDL2/FAQUsingSDL
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Zz3BVDK4FuHbq-6fef6SyAAAAMw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Zz3BVDK4FuHbq-6fef6SyAAAAMw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/4784-4F2B-1321-800A
[10] https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/743F-2E0E-C9A5-C375
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/04/steam_mac_lin_changes/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/03/valve_sponsors_arch/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/04/windows_11_linux_steam/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/02/steam_windows_eol/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/04/steam_mac_lin_changes/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/09/opencore_legacy_patcher/
[17] https://developer.chrome.com/release-notes/126
[18] https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/289795700/sunsetting-chrome-support-for-macos-10-15?hl=en
[19] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Conspiracy Theory?
From the ioQuake home page:
"This is the main macOS build link, we also have extra builds from developer Tom Kidd:
* Legacy Universal 1 Build for PowerPC, Intel 32 bit, and Intel 64 bit
* Universal 2 Build for Intel 64 bit and Apple Silicon (M1)"
I can't help imagine a conversation starting somewhat like this: A man walks by an alleyway entrance. From within the alley, a quiet voice calls out, "Psst, Buddy! Yeah, you, Mister Game Company President. My associates and I have a deal for you. We pay you to do -- nothing! That's right, an extra revenue stream for you, in exchange for simply dropping support on selected OS versions and hardware models. Whadda ya say?"
As a Steam Deck owner, I have to say that it is looking increasingly likely that I will move to a Linux based gaming laptop in the future.
The compatibility has been excellent, mostly through Valve's huge support via Proton etc. to make Wine do what it's supposed to do.
In several instances, I have games which no longer run on Windows 10 or 11. You have to jump through hoops and change DLLs to get past compatibility problems and errors, and even then things don't always work. Hell, one wanted to install DirectPlay the other day which apparently needs a reboot and my 5-year-old PC with 1000+ games on it didn't have it installed already!
I loaded the same games on my Steam Deck. Native Linux. They just downloaded. I clicked. They just ran.
The scout/sniper/etc. compatibility layers are amazing and even as a indie developer I was making my game on Windows and just sending it to the Deck and it "just worked". I will make a Linux-native version (and hope to release on Steam) because it doesn't take much but the fact that I haven't had to, for a program that Valve has never seen... that's some great backwards compatibility there.
Valve should be praised for this. They started with the idea back when Steam "Machine" / "Boxes" where a thing - desktop PCs without Windows, aimed at gamers. It was loved but kinda flopped because the compatibility wasn't there. So Valve spent years and just fixed that. And tried again with the Steam Deck. And they did an amazing job, and still are.
And now I'm seriously considering my own "Steam Box" on an ordinary laptop that I will use for everything else I do too. Windows 11 has no appeal to me. And if the vast majority of my 22-year-old library can just play without hassle... I'm happy and don't care about the latest AAA.
Valve basically standardised PC VR gaming, and gaming "emulation" via Wine on Linux, by throwing money, time, effort and hope at it. I feel they deserve my money for that.
Forget about games on the Mac
Using a Mac for gaming is the triumph of hope over experience and an exercise in masochism, just use something else.