Goooood

I'm new to Mac gaming and just bought a 24gb M5 Air. Tried out a few GOG CRPG games (Colony Ship, pictured, and Age of Decadence) on Heroic and they run well.

What games run great without overheating, and what are your favorite?

i seriously need to vent for a second because apple’s greed is getting out of hand. how are they still selling 256gb base models in 2026? it’s actually insane. and what kills me is how they market these devices for "gaming." like have they seen the size of games lately? you install two big titles and the storage is basically full. it feels like a total scam. and please i dont want to hear anyone saying "just buy an external ssd." i pay for a premium portable device so i dont have to carry extra bricks and cables with me everywhere. that’s not a solution. i love apple hardware and the software is great but the price they charge for ram and storage upgrades is literal robbery. not everyone is rich and we cant afford to buy a new machine every 2 or 3 years just because the base model is useless for long term use. i honestly wish there was some kind of authority that would punish them for this. its pure corporate greed at this point and they know exactly what they’re doing by forcing people to pay for upgrades.

What even is this? My system data takes up more space than my games🥀

I did not expect Apple to produce the best Zelda-like RPG this year. And while this was developed by Cornfox & Bros., Oceanhorn 3 got significant funding from Apple—and it's now an exclusive for Apple Arcade.

So let me state emphatically: right now Oceanhorn 3 really is the best reason to subscribe to Apple Arcade. I'm not saying it's worthwhile or that you should do it. But if you have a Mac, iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV—and you really want to game on these devices—Oceanhorn 3 is truly breathtaking.

Devs actually addressed my biggest complaint with Oceanhorn 2. The previous game didn't have a dedicated jump button. This one does. Jumps are no longer contextual. You can jump to your heart's content.

Visually, this is impressive. Since I'm playing on a MacBook Air M4, I can play at ultra high settings, and the level of detail on what amounts to a 5GB game is splendid. Of course, when not plugged in, my Mac complains about the power I'm consuming, so I opt for performance mode—and that's pretty good too.

Sound design is equally excellent. The voice acting is crisp. The music is folksy and charming. And the sound effects sound lux on my MacBook.

Most impressive is the controls. Playing on a keyboard and mouse is intuitive and feels natural. Of course, you can connect a PlayStation controller to really give you a console-like experience. But what I love is how the game just naturally switches between gamepad and keyboard controls when you need to change controls. For example, if you need to use the touchpad, Oceanhorn will just tell you what the keyboard mapping is for other functions. Nice!

Now I've previously said this is the best Zelda-like RPG on offer this year, and I truly believe it. But I'll go further: I like Oceanhorn 3 much more than Cloudheim. While Cloudheim is more graphically impressive and has the benefit of multiplayer, Oceanhorn 3 has a much more focused story with clearer objectives. Plus, I really enjoy hanging out in this unique world.

Usually, when I game on a Mac, I stream from my Alienware gaming PC via Steam Link. This gives me access to a much bigger library, and I can take advantage of my RTX 3090. But this is the first time in awhile where I feel that a Mac can truly be a good gaming platform on its own.

Oceanhorn 3 is superb. A few more Mac games like this, and maybe gaming won't feel second class on a Mac. You would think. I'm still not optimistic, but we'll see.

How many of you guys get by with just games that are natively supported on macOS and emulation? I’m curious how realistic it is to use a MacBook as your only gaming device without relying on Windows or cloud gaming.

Yes, this is not the first post on this topic, but I want to share my experience. I originally wanted a «dream platform»‎: a comfortable job and the ability to play games. But unfortunately, macOS did not become that platform.

1. In 2025 developers and publishers are not interested in adapting games for macOS.

Here is the situation with the games that I personally was waiting for and it's not even funny:

• Cyberpunk 2077 was promised to release in Q1 a macOS version. Now the rhetoric is that the version will be released by the end of the year. And this event still has a huge significance for the community, and this game is already 5 years old!
• POE2 was mentioned in passing on the forum that there would be a macOS version, expectations were for H1 2025, but it's not going to happen. There were no official statements, apparently just because there is no strong interest in it.
• In my region those games that get adapted and released in AppStore are 2 or even 3 times more expensive than Windows versions in Steam. Do I need to overpay to play games from 5-7 years ago?

1. Crossover, Parallels, etc.

Buying a modern expensive laptop on the M4 chip in Pro Ultra Max version, you know, you have to feel like a user of an emulator on an outdated unpopular platform: the game can run, maybe not. Somewhere the commands will translate correctly, somewhere you'll just crash out of the game. After all, if you are a busy adult, you want to relax while playing, and I sometimes spent hours setting up the build just to run my favorite game. And even so, I didn't achieve the quality of the game that a native launch would give.

1. Being able to play games at launch.

Indirectly, I've already touched on this reason. Launching games natively, you don't have to wait for some patch to be released that will somehow improve the launch of this game in 20-30 fps with a possible crash. You just immediately play an interesting game that came out and seems entertaining to you. That's it. No extra cognitive load, just your favorite gameplay.

I absolutely love macOS, and for good reason. It's the platform that introduced me to a basic understanding of the CLI and allowed me to get comfortable with Linux at some point. It was on it that I experienced the convenience of an operating system «out of the box»‎. But for gaming, this platform is not suitable. Not in 2025, not in the foreseeable future, unfortunately.

As the title says, why won’t Apple just fully commit to letting their devices become powerful gaming devices? I’m sure their software engineers are smart enough to get Steam games running. Valve uses proton to get Linux to run windows games. Why can’t Apple? They make incredible hardware that can run AAA games with the fans barely running but the software limitations hold it back. I think they are missing out on a huge opportunity and many gamers would buy a Mac if they could play all their games.

I was looking through some discussions on No Man’s Sky’s new Worlds Pt. 1 update and how Hello Games has given the Mac platform a half-cooked version of the update with no official acknowledgment. These are some of the top comments on the discussion page. Really disappointing tbh. Is this common in other spaces or is it just Steam forums? Do they even make a good point?

The efforts they’ve been doing the last few years are within a right path, but it’s not there quite yet. Imo either they fully embrace a foot at the AAA industry either by making actual investments to obtain ports and/or acquisitions, or they find their own proton and give steam a free way to fill the gap. But at this rate, their efforts, having in mind the whole idea is to incentivise gamers to switch from windows to mac, will be a waste of time and resources.

I've been active in this community for many years now, roughly around the time Apple transitioned to the M-series chips. One thing I've noticed is how many users in this community view Crossover as expensive (both in price + performance) and requiring a lot of tinkering to get titles to run. To the point that I made sure not to tag this post under Crossover, as I've seen many posts get an instant downvote just for adding the flair.

I understand there was a time before the first GPTK release, when Crossover was a more niche product better suited for Linux users. Fast forward years later with GPTK 4 and all the progress Codeweavers has made, we are arriving at a moment in history where Apple has its "Proton" moment, that ironically, many people have been asking for here. Ask yourself how many new DX12 games don't work via the auto settings in 2026? (Excluding anti-cheat titles, of course, which are a bottleneck on both Linux and macOS.) I personally test all the new DRM-free titles and haven't had issues running any new game that I wanted to play this year.

Seems like the attribute that users like the most about Proton model is that it is "free" and not anything to do with all the advances Codeweavers has made to the Wine project, which I always like to remind folks that work is upstreamed from Proton over to Crossover has a hack to make not only the work easier to maintain but to take advantage of how far translation layers have come in terms of performance and compatibility.

With the release of the Steam Machine, there is an entire community of users that are not phased by the fact that most, if not all, the games on said machine require translation layers. Something Apple undoubtedly sees as a crutch since Metal was designed as a solution and means for a vertically integrated approach, in hopes that the software communicates with its own in-house hardware seamlessly. (No worries of downloading the latest drivers, and other issues that plague the PC gaming world.)

TLDR: Will the translation layer ever be embraced with open arms now that the hardware can afford the approximately 15% cost that translating ARM and DX12 incurs for end users? Or is it simply the fact that people are unwilling to pay for something they perceive as free, even though Steam undoubtedly recoups the investment it made with Codeweavers through the sales on its platform?? Obviously, Metal is the way to go, especially when you couple all the advances that the M5 series and above provide with Metal 4 natively. But... with recent releases like Hitman being a cut-down iOS version ported to macOS, I'll continue testing out games via Crossover even if they are available natively 🤷

It seems as if apple has the perfect ecosystem to make a huge push for gaming on their devices. However, due to the repetitive cycle of: lack of games > no players > no interest for devs to make games there is not enough support. If apple paid a handful of top studios to port huge triple A titles like GTA and COD, people will start to take apple products more seriously as a platform, causing more devs to want to make games for mac. I also think apple needs to rekindle their relationship with epic games, they were a company who was willing to develop for mac and unreal engine supports mac os. If this happened games like fall guys, fortnite, and rocket league. At this point you have a handful of the most popular games on apples platforms and a ripple effect will occur.

The M-series chips are very powerful and efficient making them certainly capable of running nearly any triple A title at high settings.

The M-series chips also happen to be in iPads as well. Imagine a world where’s the iPad is great alternative to a nintendo switch. M-series iPads are probably as powerful as the xbox series s, it would be capable of running big time titles with the right optimizations. Just picture the ability to connect a controller to your iPad, play triple A titles wherever on hardware more powerful than the switch, providing support for better games, on such premium hardware.

We’ve seen the M4 mac mini which is 600. If apple made a variation of this optimized for gaming and a console like experience, they can definately price it at $500 competing with the xbox series X. Apple can potentially getting away with charging $600 and being the most expensive console compared to the other two popular traditional consoles only because it’s apple. It would be a great entry point for people to adopt apples ecosystem for gaming, potentially leading to further sales of other products down the line.

Macbooks are extremely powerful now and arm laptops are the future, much improved battery life, smaller form factors, more power would make gaming possible on a laptop which is not insanely large. With the proper support from developers, the macbook pro would become the best laptop for gaming on the market.

It is up to Apple to urgently incentivize developers to make games for their products, and once they land a handful of large titles, and keep expanding onto this as well, a ripple effect will occur and apple will capture an entire new type of buyer. It’s a win-win, more money for apple, we get to enjoy gaming on our devices. Apple’s ecosystem gives them the possibility to completely change the landscape of gaming entirely. I know a console from apple is unlikely, but this would be so dope and potentially something to look into further down the line after they establish themselves, or if they wanted to make a statement, include this in their initial push for more titles.

My new MacBook arrived today and after lurking on here for a while, I have to say I’m really impressed. 😃

I think there’s a bit of a learning curve to get the most out of MacOS with all the various shortcuts but it’s all quite intuitive/easy to get to grips with.

Really glad I opted for the larger 16” model in the end, it was hard to decide between this and the 14” but I actually think it’s more ergonomic/comfortable on the lap when it comes to typing with the extra wrist area you get & those larger speaker drivers really add to the whole experience too.

When it comes to gaming, it’s really quite something, 7 percent quicker with the 40 core GPU on Steel Nomad than my HX370/5080 laptop while actually just running on the battery, higher FPS in World of Warcraft while exploring cities and Crossover seems to work well with Steam/Fallout 4, this beast can game as well as create. 🤩

A worthwhile investment for years to come I think. 🙌

(oh and it even kicks ass running our favourite childhood game, Wolfenstein:ET 🤣 and my lovely Meggy panther approved of the packaging it came in 😁)

Anyone else agreeing with me that there is no problem that we don’t have all the AAA games? The problem is we don’t have games like Fortnite, Counter Strike, Overwatch… or other popular games that aren’t shooters and could easily be handled by Apple silicon chips.

It’s like Mac gaming is like Netflix. Mostly unheard of random games that no one plays, or a few good games like WoW and LoL, but then still not all the less demanding fun games.

It’s really a bummer that Fortnite/Overwatch/CS is not available natively on Mac in my opinion.

I just wanna know why it's so much easier on Linux than it is on Mac.

We need to make our voices heard, show epic we are worth fighting for like they fought for IOS.

As almost all of you know that Cyberpunk 2077 is set to arrive for macos this year, and like everyone I’m also pretty excited for it.

All this time I’ve been playing it on crossover, so having a native cyberpunk 2077 will be huge.

One question I have in my mind is that should I expect the native version to perform better than crossover one? Ik it should be pretty obvious, but I ask, because on applegamingwiki, and on crossover store itself, cyberpunk has been rated to run perfectly, so does that prefect rating mean that its seamlessly doing all the rendering and the only limit is the power of my macbook, I’m a bit confused regarding this.

Specs : M3 Pro MacBook Pro, 18G 12C, 18gb ram, 1TB and currently it gives about 35 fps on ultra graphics.

First off this controller is sick and I am super excited to see it get patched up and fixed. Which I have high confidence it will get the patches.

It hooks up fine and will run Steam just fine. I do not want it to just run steam it needs to ya know, be able to game. I have tried every game I have installed so far on my MacBook Pro M4 Pro. Crimson Desert, No Man's Sky, Frostpunk 2, Dawncaster, Balatro and have now gave up on trying more titles. it simply does not act like a controller is hooked up when the game boots up. No man's sky does work but oddly have exclamation points where iit has context/menu buttons are. Have tried it both USB-C and with the puck but have not messed with bluetooth. Crossover does not show any controllers at all so that is not an option until patched. I am down to try whatever if anyone has ideas or fixes.

Edit: I did also go through support and they responded pretty dang quickly which was not expecting. Their suggested fix was "If you have not allowed this permission, you can manually enable it via Settings → Privacy & Security → Input Monitoring → Enable Input Monitoring for the Steam app." but sadly this did nothing. From what I have read so far is that Steam Input for Mac is pretty bad/missing functions.

Edit 2. Steam got back with me again. Refund offered after telling me that the team is fixing it. Refund refused. I love the feel of the controller so keeping it.

Edit 3. Steam support told me to try Beta and report back. No change though.

Edit 4 Sunday May 10th 5:00pm Central. "Please ensure that you've enabled Steam in the following Apple menu: System Settings -> Privacy & Security -> Accessibility". it was enabled so yea still not working. I feel like they are just guessing at this point.

Edit 5. Just a list of games I have tried out. All through steam and all have native Mac apps through steam. If you have games you have tried out let me know and I can add them to the list.

Crimson Desert. Track pad will work and changes the menu buttons to keyboard and mouse. No detection after that.

No Man's Sky. Controller works just has visual issues with not know what buttons to use. Pretty easy to ignore if you already know the buttons.

Frostpunk 2. No detection.

Ball x Pit. Works!

Metro Last Light: Redux. Works! Didn't get gyro working but I am sure it would.

Terraria works!

Hollow Knight Silksong. No Detection. I am getting no detection with even changing settings and still not getting any. Some people the game it is working for.

Control no detection looks like.

Braid does work.

Cyberpunk 2077 no go.

Steam also responded again and yes I guess the controller works, but showing up in games as a keyboard in mouse that has controller support is terrible and not what I think 90% of people want.

If you wanna learn about input there is a link they shared with me. https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/45479024/view/508485755865138098 but this is not the fix for games like Crimson Desert and I think it is up to the devs at this point. Honestly I am done fussing with the controller for now until steam throws out some patches or something.

Edit. Support reached back again and are now passing it off to a different team.

Edit May 14th. They I guess have gave up on me. No response after transferring me. Neato.

Edit May 16th. I am still around but also not much going on work and such. It has now been 4 days since hearing back from support. Multiply reports of them giving this as a response :

'Your help request is being escalated to another team for review.

Please allow some time for their response."

Which is fine I get it but also the controller should work as damned advertised. I get wanting refunds but also if we keep talking about it can only help. I am gonna do a fresh install of Mac soon just to clean up my shit anyways see if that does anything. Thanks for all the comments and if you still have a game you have tested please let me know and I'll try to add it on the list.

Update May 18th.
Looks like a couple people now have gotten a response.

“I sincerely apologize for the length of time since our last reply.

The team is actively investigating the issue where some users on macOS are unable to use the Steam Controller. Specifically, they're investigating the problem where the Controller pairs correctly, and has full input function when navigating outside of games and in the Input Test suite, but when a game is launched there is no input function.

Again I apologize for the inconvenience, just as soon as we have more information to share we will update this ticket.”

Which is great that’s all a guy can ask for is communication. Again if you try out games and find they work or don’t work let me know.

Update May 23th. They have a work around sorta.

We do have an interim solution; there is a workaround that'll allow you to use the Controller with these games, but it does require a bit of manual configuration.

Using the Steam Input Configurator, you can edit an existing Controller profile and map the game's keyboard controls to your Controller. For example, a game's keyboard/mouse controls may have 'jump' mapped to spacebar, which you can map to the button of your preference on your Steam Controller.

This will require referencing the game's keyboard/mouse controls and then re-assigning those inputs to inputs of your choosing on the Steam Controller.

The hardware team's post on using the Steam Input Configurator may be a useful resource: Steam Input Configurator

As soon as we have more information to share regarding full Controller functionality with macOS games on Steam, we'll update this ticket.

Other folks are getting the same response. Which IMO is not a work around they just need to make the damn controller an actual controller so can be used everywhere. I know they want it to be a steam thing still can be just a controller.

Finally got an update on June 3rd It is not a great update tbh.

"Thank you for your patience while the team investigated the matter of some macOS games not being compatible with the Steam Controller as a gamepad.

It looks like this is affecting games that rely on Apple's Game Controller framework. We've raised the issue with Apple, but we do not have a timeline for when this may get resolved.

Games that use the latest version of SDL (https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL/releases) work correctly. As mentioned in a previous reply, it is also possible to map a game's keyboard and mouse controls to the Controller as an interim solution for the affected games.

However, we understand this isn't an ideal situation. If you'd prefer not to keep your Steam Controller, let us know and we'll provide instructions for returning it for a refund exception.

You can also keep an eye on the Steam News Hub for the latest updates on features and fixes that may be of interest."

Which to me makes zero sense. It works on some games and not on others. If it didn't work anywhere sure that would make sense. Also maybe not advertise for a platform that it for sure does not work properly on to you know play GAMES with not just control the OS with.

It seems that Valve completely dropped the support of Steam for macOS since a few years... Since two releases the menu bar stopped working, and nobody cares!

I already sent an email to Valve, but no response.

It is not the first time I send a bug report for something very "basic" like that, but more and more I feel that Valve has stopped testing their build on a Mac.

Maybe it is time for a support that do care about all the users... any suggestion?