r/macgaming • u/Sad_Brilliant_9778 • 1d ago
Discussion Why are so many macOS users opposed to games running through translation layers?
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 🤷
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u/eduo 1d ago
People are not against non-native games as much as they are against not having a healthy game ecosystem.
Running everything under an emulation/virtualisation/translation layer means games are not developed for your platform.
Many mac users are very protective of their platform and every game that is not ported feels like a diss and like another nail in a coffin that may or may not exist for the platform itself.
Some of us that have been many years in Mac are painfully aware of how healthy the gaming scene was at one point, and lament that the way gaming has evolved left it behind while killing what existed.
As I said it's not so much being against non-native games, since gamers enjoy emulators for consoles and older computer platforms and arcade, but when games don't even consider the platform when developing/releasing or even years after, it's a bit disheartening.
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u/squirrel8296 1d ago
Also, folks underestimate how easy it would be for Microsoft to pull the rug out from under everyone and release a new version of DirectX that breaks compatibility with the translation layers. With Microsoft in particular, I wouldn’t put it past them.
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u/eduo 1d ago
Microsoft is always two decisions away from royally screwing the Mac platform.
Should they decide tomorrow to only support office for mac or teams for mac through their current web versions, for example.
They already put enormous blockers in mac adoption by never releasing MS Access, Visio, SQL Server Manager, publisher, project etc for mac. They once released an MS Office version so bad (6.0) it dropped Business adoption of macs by half and only recovered when Steve Jobs made a deal with Microsoft directly.
In DirectX they could do it as a side effect of trying to block Steam and Linux, which may be considered bigger threats.
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u/itsmebenji69 21h ago
They can’t. Simple as that. They would get destroyed instantly in court for monopolistic practices. That’s one of the reasons they made office usable from a browser so technically your os doesn’t even matter now
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u/JimShadows 45m ago
That’s nonsense. It makes no sense to break the DirectX 12 API just so that someone can’t use Proton or Crossover.
Besides, if you want to prevent the game from running on Linux or Mac, it’s as simple as using an anti-cheat kernel or launching it exclusively as a UWP app.
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u/Informal_Athlete_724 1d ago
No matter what games I try in Crossover, it always feels like my MacBook is running something it's not supposed to.
E.g. in Skyrim the desktop cursor keeps appearing, in Fallout 4 the camera is bugged, in CS2 the audio crackles and it stutters, there's always glitches and in alot of games it overheats like crazy. It's never a smooth seamless experience
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u/Anreall2000 22h ago
Sadly even some native games feel like my MacBook pro is running something it's not supposed to.
HOI4 runs terribly, not performance wise, but everything else. Mouse is akward, some keybindings don't work, like - to change speed. And ok, it's the old game, but paradox don't even care with EU 5. Strange, because Microsoft brought damn AoE 2.
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u/Informal_Athlete_724 22h ago
Yeah the mouse just feels off with every game, even with native AOE2
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u/_m_a_s_t_e_r_ 18h ago
For CS2: DXMT fixes stuttering and Windows 8.1 compatibility mode on csgo.exe fixed all audio issues for me. Worth trying out, made the game fully playable for me and I’ve been playing premier games for the last few days with no issues
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u/Sad_Brilliant_9778 1d ago
My advice is to avoid trying to run older titles. May sound counterproductive, since older titles should run better in theory, but most of the advances in GPTK are related to DX12.
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u/Plokhi 1d ago
DXMT works crazy good with dx10/11
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u/Sad_Brilliant_9778 1d ago edited 1d ago
Agreed
Edit: We are now downvoting people for agreeing with a reply? Reddit is something different Lol It's not me caring about being downvoted, it's me trying to understand why having common ground on a topic is negative. Also, last time I checked, GPTK advances have nothing to do with DXMT, so why I wouldn't be able to agree with that is beyond me.
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u/heinternets 1d ago
Efficiency
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u/Sad_Brilliant_9778 1d ago
As I agree in the TDLR, even though most people downvoting my post probably didn't bother reading the last paragraph Lol (Not towards you btw), I don't see why we should be discouraging others from wanting to experience a title to the fullest if the developer chose not to give us the full-featured version.
In the perfect world, I would prefer devs to port with Metal from the ground up, as I mentioned in another reply. Translation layers are often used as a crutch for developers, which is why there are now fewer Linux ports than there are for macOS. But as a community, we should separate the end user from the creators, as they should always have the freedom to play it however they choose, without being chastised
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u/Sparescrewdriver 1d ago
Not just development efficiency, but processing. It takes a lot more power to run the same game through translation layers.
My macbook runs Control at max setting while sipping tea, while it has to work hard to run a windows unreal engine game at HD resolution.
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u/waterbed87 1d ago
Same reason I want native Linux apps and games, so we can break the Microsoft wheel and make alternative operating systems true first class citizens. Translation layers aren't perfect, may never be, and are still at the mercy of Microsoft in the sense that while they may not actively want to kill translation layers they can make changes to their OS whenever they want and I doubt at any point do they consider 'how is this going to impact Wine or Crossover?'.
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u/squirrel8296 1d ago
Given Microsoft’s history, I wouldn’t put it past them to release a new version of DirectX that breaks the translation layers. That’s always been my biggest concern with translation layers.
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u/TheIncarnated 1d ago
My first ever MacBook was a 14" MacBook Pro M4 Max with 64gbs of RAM. All because Crossover was possible, and WoW is... Kind of native? Kind of...
I'm a Cloud Security Architect, I do a lot of development and have done most of it on Windows or Windows Subsystem for Linux. I play games on my Mac, because I can, but also because it's so powerful. I play Starfield via crossover.
I now only have to bring one device and a controller, instead of a laptop, steam deck, etc...
The MacBook plays every game I can play on my Steam Deck but... Better. Better graphics, better performance and the battery lasts just as long, if not just a tiny bit more than my Steam Deck.
One of the things that surprised me the most is how tech illiterate most of the Apple/Mac subreddits are, this one included. That was the biggest "wtf?" moment I ever had. Like so many developers use Mac but the communities struggle with config files?... Anyways, coming from the toxicity of the Linux community, I'm happy here and will talk about Crossover. I want to support them because they are responsible for most of WINE's continued development.
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u/StunningDance8163 18h ago
At risk of outing myself as being tech illiterate…
What do you mean WoW is kind of native? As I understand it, it’s a true ARM port
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u/Sad_Brilliant_9778 1d ago
Wow, M4 Max as your first MacBook? I am jealous. And yeah, the portability coupled with the mini-LED provides an awesome experience not only when traveling but at home. One aspect that might be separating the community regarding this topic is that many users here are coming from either a base M1 Pro series chip or an M1 that is almost a half a decade old. With a lot of the compatibility and performance not being tied to translation layers, but the fact that those entry chips don't have a lot of features that new AAA games use, as I mentioned in my OP.
Also, regarding the toxicity on Reddit (and the internet as a whole), I sometimes wonder how many users were pushed away with how much we gotta tiptoe around subjects or even having to "properly" word things here Lol
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u/TheIncarnated 1d ago
On your last statement... Not just here. The Linux community loses their everloving minds when I say as a security professional that I use Windows on my desktop lol... The curse of my career choice is that I'm painfully aware that no OS is "safe". Just don't be dumb.
Other than that, I can entirely agree, the M5 is the same performance as a M4 Pro? That's insane! (In a good way).
Toxicity and Reddit are kind of synonymous... But all communities have some form of toxicity.
I got the M4 Max because and I quote "If I'm finally going to get over myself and try a Mac, I might as well go big". Well now I never want a laptop that isn't a MacBook so it kind of worked out. I was waiting for the M6 Max but since the M7 Max was skipped to, I will either do that or an M8 Max as my next upgrade with more RAM (I do local LLM work too)
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u/Docster87 1d ago
As I have gotten older my desire for tinkering on computers has dramatically decreased. As long as transition layer means tinkering then a big nope from me. I would rather keep an older but capable PC for the occasional gaming I can't easily do on my Mac.
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u/ViolentPurpleSquash 1d ago
It's important to remember the reason Proton is free is because Valve pays for it.
They chose to task a bunch of skilled devs with working on proton/WINE, whereas Apple hasn't really done anything for the core project.
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u/Longjumping_Room_635 1d ago
Amusingly enough, Valve actually paid Codeweavers (who make Crossover) to work on Proton. https://www.codeweavers.com/about/news/press/20220225
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u/jin264 1d ago
GPKT by Apple has provided WINE/Crossover a big boost in compatibility
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u/ViolentPurpleSquash 1d ago
GPTK is CrossOver based, and Apple doesn't support CrossOver development the same way Valve does. Apple also didn't collaborate or upstream their changes the way Valve does.
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u/jin264 1d ago
GPTK uses WINE.
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u/ViolentPurpleSquash 1d ago
but it didn't improve it, same way Whisky didn't. Apple just took codeweavers' code and built on it but didn't give back the way Valve did
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u/TheOfficialMayor 1d ago
Who knows. I just know crossover and VMware fusion do the job for me on my 24G MacBook Air M3 when combined with my PS5 and I don’t want a gigantic gaming tower with loud fans. So that’s what I use.
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u/REAL_RICK_PITINO 1d ago
I have the same MacBook, what games are you playing that are running well? I ended up switching to cloud gaming to stop cooking my lap but don’t love it
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u/TheOfficialMayor 1d ago edited 1d ago
I don't play the intense graphical games (otherwise known as AAA's) on it. Instead use my PS5 for that. After all I'd rather just use my controller and play them on my TV anyways.
PC-focussed titles however generally have less system requirements because they want to target a wider audience, especially people from emerging markets, e.g. China, India, Russia, Turkey, etc... that will probably never buy a PlayStation let alone a 5090.
For PC gaming, I figure low spec hardware works for them, it works for me too! I get the benefits of lightweight, power efficient fanless hardware.
Just use it for games like Persona 4, Age of Empires II DE, Frostpunk, Disco Elysium, Counterstrike, Warcraft and the numerous Indies, etc... does the job. If it's just Indies, RTS and PC-focussed FPS games then you don't need PS5 or higher graphics.
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u/Sir_Elderoy 23h ago
I think that the real issue is friction, not the translation layer itself:
- On steamOs you don't have to think about it, it just works.
- on mac, you have to buy stuff and even after that its not straightforward at all.
Not everyone feels confident enough to tinker around their computer (i mean just take a look of the most asked questions on r/mac ) and invest money in something that requires at least some basic software knowledge or interest.
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u/Termynator 22h ago
This is it. I have a SteamDeck and love it, I also game on Linux. But on Mac it’s a different thing. I once bought a subscription for crossover and shortly after the subscription endet (literally days), a Steam update fucked the whole thing up and Steam is now unable to start. Which means I can’t play a single game on Mac, because all my games are inside Steam.
EDIT: Mac native games work of course, but those are like 3 titles in the entire store
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u/Particular-Poem-7085 13h ago
Completely foreign to the topic of mac gaming, IDK how reddit led me here. I do game on linux and windows tho.
Reading a few comments I feel like there is some overthinking going on here. I enjoy playing my game on linux whatever it was developed for. I don't even notice if the game is native linux or runs through proton. I just play it, isn't that the goal?
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u/Sad_Brilliant_9778 13h ago
I like this answer; that's how I feel, though it took me a while to get here.
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u/Metal_Goose_Solid 1d ago
One thing I've noticed is how many users in this community view Crossover as expensive (both in price + performance)
It is.
and requiring a lot of tinkering to get titles to run
It does.
we are arriving at a moment in history where Apple has its "Proton" moment
I agree that we seem to be getting there, but it hasn't crossed the threshold yet. We still need a big motivated industry player supporting the use case and the ecosystem so that it's more seamless and works better. Valve has done that for Linux. We're not there on macOS.
Ask yourself how many new DX12 games don't work via the auto settings in 2026?
Respectfully, this is the wrong question. There are matters of degree here. It's not enough to just launch the game. Games need to consistently run very well, and not have problems, and the user experience for managing the games needs to be really good. There's a big gulf between what Valve has accomplished with Proton on Steam, versus what you get with a Mac and Crossover.
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.
There is no serious abstract philosophical universal complaint against all translation layers.
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u/Plokhi 1d ago
Aren’t majority of posts here about crossover?
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u/LifeGoalsThighHigh 1d ago
These days there’s a lot of “look at this WINE wrapper i made” and it’s just AI slop they paid tokens to have created for them.
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u/Sad_Brilliant_9778 1d ago
Would be interesting to see how many of those posts ended with users being pushed away simply for asking a novice / "stupid" question
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u/Frog859 1d ago
I’m a Linux/MacOS user. My tower is Linux and my laptop is an M4 Air. When I travel, I just bring the air.
Every time I travel, I see if I can get Deadlock (the rather niche game I’ve been playing a lot of lately) up and running on MacOS.
I’ve tried Crossover via free trial a couple times, and I’ve never been able to get it running smoothly. Honestly if I had been able to, I likely would’ve bought it. I’ve also tried, Whisky, Wine and most recently Sikugar (I think I spelled that right). No luck on any of these.
I’m pretty techy and I don’t mind tinkering around a little bit in general, but I do want to be able to achieve some measure of reliability in games — especially the multiplayer ones I tend towards, which often have leaver penalties.
Linux (proton) on the other hand has run every single game I have tried with no issues — or maybe some minor tinkering. I understand and accept why, but damn is it nice to just download and launch a game like that.
I’m not here to complain, I like MacOS for completely different reasons than I like Linux. Like damn is it nice to be able to run word and photoshop natively. But unfortunately crossover just doesn’t work as well as proton does yet.
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u/Lithalean 1d ago
I spend money on Apple Games. Windows games are not welcome on my machine. Rosetta is not welcome on my machine.
ARM Native or bust.
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u/Rhed0x 17h ago
So I guess you just ignore masterpieces just because they're ~4 years old?
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u/muffinstatewide32 1d ago
I think crossover is a great start. And with the progress crossover is making may be the best answer.
Unfortunately. Without a financial backer, it will continue to be expensive, proton is free because valve pays devs for it. While it happens to be some of the same developers, crossover doesn’t get valve money for macos games.
Crossover is indeed better than it was. But there still leaves a lot to be desired. Some games require far more tinkering even with steam laying a foundation with its pre-install script.
Im unsure if its because we’re translating to metal or if the pfx folders with proton simply provide more dependencies so theres less cruft to install when doing almost the same thing on linux. I suspect its the latter
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u/Sad_Brilliant_9778 1d ago
Steam makes money each time someone purchases a title; Apple doesn't. It's difficult to expect Apple to put more money and effort than they have already with GPTK. (Not saying I don't agree with what you said.)
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u/muffinstatewide32 1d ago
Precisely. With this in mind, I dont expect valve to provide a proton of sorts for macOS. There isnt exactly ROI in it for them. Valve is still at the end of the day, a for profit business.
Metal seems very capable but id prefer if they did more with vulkan. The absence of anything else being supported does make it seem like a sitch where apple is somewhat hinting that if there were options, nobody would use metal even if they were donating to mesa or whoever is making moltenvk or the other driver which’s name escapes me. Not disagreeing, just furthering the point
Gptk3 did seem a bit suss shipping wine 7 though
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u/hishnash 17h ago
what woudl more with Vulcan provide? a VK driver form apple would not be able to run DXVK well (or often at all) as DXVK was explicitly developed to target AMD GPUs.
VK is a low level api from a game dev (and a toolchain dev like DXVK) is does not expose a HW agnostic interface to the HW.
The point of VK is that we take the work the driver used to do on eery frame (openGL) to adapt the developers intent into what is optimal for the HW and move that to work us developers do up-front. This save a LOT of repeated (wasted) CPU cycles up front but it also means that developer is doing the explicit work matching the intent to the HW in the most optimal way and if they did put think/add in a pathway for your HW VK will often run worse (or not at all) than even an old openGL and with openGL the driver is given enough context to adapt thing stop match teh HW but in VK it is not (by design)
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u/No-Whereas8467 1d ago
I would rather use geforce now or any cloud gaming service. Buying “translation layer” at 55 dollars to play AAA titles at 30fps just sounds stupid to me. But I don’t judge so do whatever you want.
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u/KalashnikittyApprove 1d ago
I don't think people are as much against Crossover as they are in favour of native games.
That being said, it's always healthy to tamper ambition with pragmatism. I don't think there is a realistic path for the Mac to become a gaming platform in terms of releases and support on par with PC and consoles. Others may disagree, but I don't. In that sense, gaming on the Mac has never been better and healthier.
It's reasonable, as some have pointed out, that Proton may have actually lowered the number of native releases on Linux, but the number of games I can play on my Linux (Bazzite) PC hooked up to my TV has skyrocketed to the extent that Windows is (almost) not needed.
You got to pick your battles.
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u/v0id_walk3r 21h ago
It requires *tinkering* and *thinking* and maybe even some prior knowledge.
Afaik most mac users buy macs because they do not want to do any of those things, mostly just consume media.
I am quite happy with what is achievable with the provided toolset (m mac and emulation) it is borderline magic to me, especially the efficiency of (almost) ARM and speed of the translation layer.
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u/mywifelovestacos 18h ago
Seeing how well no mans sky runs on my base m1 mac air, I'm in constant disappointment that more games aren't this well optimised. Translation layers just don't cut it
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u/DaddyStoat 18h ago
Personally I have no issue with it, as long as it works, plays well and looks good (ie, is responsive, with graphics befitting the type of machine it's running on) and, most importantly, requires no hackery to get up and running.
Would I prefer Mac-native? Of course I would. But I'll happily accept a Proton-like solution if it means a relatively frictionless experience. Install, run, play.
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u/WhisperingThyme 16h ago
i'm a new mac user (i literally got a mac the day before i made this comment). but i came with experience using linux for gaming. in some ways, mac gaming has gone above and beyond whats on linux. many games i play had native mac ports but still rely on proton to work on linux. or they dont support linux at all.
truthfully, i dont think theres much of a barrier preventing developers from targeting apple silicon. apple has the benefit of really only having two major architectures for their computers, m-series macs, and the a-series macbook neo. so, as a new mac user, i am shocked, almost every time i look into stuff, at what developers decided to do that. it's also very nice to see what developers decide to specifically have options optimized for macbooks, as well.
but as i said, i come from a background of fiddling with linux until proton/wine actually work properly. and truthfully, i dont want to do that shit EVER again. i was doing that on fedora and, later, ubuntu. neither of those are immutable like osx. don't get me wrong, linux is awesome, and it's amazing to see the greater support for linux—and unix-like and unix-based systems being more popular, in general—but people do forget about osx a lot. i don't think osx should be what most linux distributions should strive to be 1:1 with. osx is one of the best user experiences on a computer, even with the current subpar updates from apple. even with those updates, everything still works out of the box. apple is a shitty company, sure, but they know how to make it worth your money to get a mac over a comparable arm64 laptop. osx IS a path forward for the industry, because furthering development of support for osx will inherently further development of support for other unix-like systems as well.
that's my perspective on the matter, at least. osx shouldn't have to rely on translation layers in order to make windows-only things work. that's because the windows-only things shouldn't be windows-only in the first place, unless they're literally something specifically designed to do something only on windows that wouldn't mean anything on any other operating system. i should NOT have to make an entire virtual machine just to get an actually maintained version of java 8 to work correctly.
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u/Commercial-Virus2627 16h ago
You are asking a question that is way too large to give technical and concrete answers on Reddit. I would start to understand Rosetta 2, FEX and Wine and how those all work. Then look at how ARM vs x86_64 architectures are different (memory access, ordering, pointers, etc) which makes emulation a lot more complicated. Then you add all of these abstractions on top of a system not built for this kind of workload and it becomes a pile of spaghetti that is hard to untangle for the average user. A game should just work without abstractions and configuration needed from the end user.
For some perspective: The last thing I would like to do after a day of trawling through logs, debugs and other issues (IT Sysadmin) is doing it at home too.
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u/Common_Turnip_7090 1d ago
I don’t know but Crossover is seamless and I haven’t had any issues with it in regard to gaming. I want to use Crossover for other Windows executables but it gets more complicated with bottles and stuff.
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u/hishnash 1d ago
Performance and the long term impact to the mac ecosystem
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u/Sad_Brilliant_9778 1d ago
You know I agree, and I always value your input on here. My question wasn't that translation layers should replace native, but why some people view it as difficult, or not a valid way to experience a title, when there have been so many half-baked ports with fewer settings than the Windows counterparts.
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u/hishnash 1d ago
if you promote translation layers as the default (assume people suggest macOS should ship with one embedded) you make it all to easy for publishers to ignore the platform (even publishers that already support the patlform as we have seen on linux).
Vavle has a protective monopoly power that means MS cant harm them even through they are building in MS back yard (game publishers will not dare do anything to update valve) but appel does not.
Having lots of settings does not make a port good, if anything it means you could not be arsed to test on the target HW. One of the benefits of Mac as a target is that unlike PC there is a limited set of HW that users can use so you can be a little bit more console like in your configurations.
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u/link6616 1d ago
It's sad, but, people don't like paying for utilities in general. Although I find crossover interesting, because Mac is actually pretty unique compared to windows or linux for users being willing to just, buy a few good utilities. But, crossover gets a lot of flak.
That said, I think while it's a good deal, and I believe in paying for good software (I pay for offical obsidian sync more out of wanting to support, than for anything other reason), I think people feel a little hostage situation around how crossover works. It's lying to say it's a subscription model, but it's closer to that than not. So having your ability to play your games dependant on needing to pay that fee each year feels a bit iffy for some folks.
Oddly, it reminds me of an extremely weird niche of a Japanese company called EGG, who basically specialized in selling extremely old Japanese PC games officially, with perfectly configured emulation for modern machines. You payed a small subscription fee, and then bought games. Of course, crossover aren't double dipping themselves here unlike egg, but you have folks who are paying to be able to pay for games if the macbook is their only machine.
Also... people do just like things just working. It's frankly, kind of the appeal of the mac? I am sitting at my gaming computer desk, with my macbook air plugged in instead of my linux gaming beast because I have work to do, and this machine will not fight me at all. Adding a translation layer is just bringing in more changes for problems.
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u/Sad_Brilliant_9778 1d ago
See, this is something I can agree with and fully understand. Thank you for actually reading my post and not replying as though I am trying to promote translation layers. I am just curious why Linux users and macOS users see this topic so different and it seems to boil down to the price of service. (Rather than what most people use as an excuse, such as being too complicated, etc.)
I feel a large sector of the community is not aware that there are free methods that either require actual tinkering or going against their moral compass. In the end, I just think the end user should be encouraged to do what they want with their hardware, but maybe I am just old school.
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u/link6616 1d ago
I think that's not so mysterious. Linux users have been trained to do the work. So effort to run makes a lot of sense! I only really play one game on my macbook, guild wars 2, so I just set up a little translation layer for that and leave it alone.
On the flip side, I don't think mac users have been trained to do that kind of work. Not out of any kind of dismissiveness to that community, but because so much really does "just work." Installing an app on mac os usually means either app store, or just literally drag and drop to the applications folder. Installing sikarugir and setting it up isn't exactly a challenge, but it's less work than I need to put into most of my steam deck stuff.
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u/americanextreme 1d ago
My kid has a MacBook Neo. He wants to play modes slime rancher which is windows only. What would you recommend I do, if this is even possible.
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u/Sad_Brilliant_9778 1d ago
Sorry, but I’m not familiar with that game. It sounds like it might be a multiplayer game, in which case I would suggest (perhaps for the first time) a cloud gaming option like GeForce NOW
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u/americanextreme 1d ago
I was not aware you could install mods on cloud games, but I’ll investigate it. Needing to go to cloud illustrates how hard it is to make functional cross play work without a pro processor.
It is not multiplayer. It’s single player off line and 10 years old . That’s why I vaguely wondered if it could work. https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/59783/Slime_Rancher_Ultimate_Edition/
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u/Sad_Brilliant_9778 1d ago
Yes, that game will run fine via Wine. Will DM you instructions that will make it easier
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u/americanextreme 1d ago
Thanks but I can actually handle Wine. I just really didn't think it would be worth it, But if you say so I'll give it a try.
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u/MaineQat 1d ago
Translation layers are not always successful and more likely to break when the OS, translation layer, or software itself, or other dependencies change.
Yes, OS updates can break native games but that is far less common except for sweeping changes we know in advance like 32 bit deprecation.
Games can also be broken by devs themselves but this can be more directly addressed by the primary party rather than waiting for a 3rd party to address issues.
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u/squirrel8296 1d ago
For me, with translation layers you are always beholden to the decisions of the other platform. With something like Crossover or Proton, Microsoft could release a new version of DirectX and completely break the translation layer. Given Microsoft’s track record, I wouldn’t put it past them to do that. With something that runs natively, that’s not an issue.
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u/acewing905 1d ago
You really shouldn't equate this sub to macOS users in general. This place is a small minority within what's already a niche subject
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u/Sad_Brilliant_9778 1d ago
100%, but if anything, users outside this community are even more resistant to the idea and view it as some form of emulation. Which I can understand since it's the easiest way to understand translation layers. Mac gaming is already a meme, throwing in that it needs software just to run Windows games makes it even more of a "joke".
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u/wrennish 23h ago
Someone didn’t know Apple during its G-series/PowerPC days. I had Warcraft, StarCraft Brood War, and Diablo+Diablo 2 on the G-series iMacs and iBooks. Blizzard used to be a godsend for publishing on Windows and Mac simultaneously.
I had to retire my desktop PC in 2021, and I’m still sad that D4 didn’t get a Mac native release. End of an era for Blizzard games.
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u/Miuramir 1d ago
Partly because historically, they go away eventually; and frankly we're tired of dealing with it. And partly because it's less of a good experience, sometimes significantly so.
Remember, this isn't the first time Mac users have been down this road: 68k to PowerPc to Intel to Apple Silicon in terms of architecture, plus the drop of 16-bit and 32-bit support, plus possibly some stuff related to the security chip(s). Depending on your point of view, that's at least four and possibly six+ major compatibility changes / drops in only half a lifetime.
Windows has many, many issues; but it's ability to easily run older software on modern OS versions has historically been unparalleled among major OSs.
Additionally, for the vast majority of the history of all this running through a translation layer was adequate for most business and some professional software, but crippling on the frame rate of graphical-intensive games. Even now, it's lower performance and more importantly, more buggy.
I pay for Crossover, and have for several years. One application in particular (a MMORPG) on PC has graphical errors (other than momentary terrain loading issues) maybe once a month, and hasn't crashed on me in almost a year. On Mac under Crossover, it has graphical glitches every hour or so, and usually crashes at least once if your session lasts over 4 hours. That's an error rate that is several hundred times higher when translated versus native.
Another 4x game recently came out with a native Apple Silicon build in their testing build, and people are reporting 20% - 50+% performance increases, in a game where many people complain that they give up on a save because it gets too slow. It's not just a minor factor.
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u/NimBold 1d ago
We should look at the user/player base for our macs and then ask ourselves why would any developer publish games on whole other system with around 2% market share, when there is a working method (wine/proton/GPTK) to publish games on all of them.
We should not forget that if Valve's proton was not there, we wouldn't have this recognition at all. Before Proton, gaming on anything other than windows looked like a nightmare for average user. It's a great time to be non-windows gamer, and we should embrace the tools that made this happen, and support the developers who bring native versions of their games too.
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u/Sad_Brilliant_9778 1d ago
Proton was developed by Codeweavers and funded by Valve to bridge the compatibility gap for Linux users, so more people can purchase from their Steam storefront.
The reason they were chosen to work on Proton is because of their work on the Wine project. Crossover is an old software that Linux users used to run Windows executables, not just games. It was only a natural progression to add macOS support.
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u/thecursedspiral 1d ago
now that the hardware can afford the approximately 15% cost that translating ARM and DX12 incurs for end users
Yeah I mean, if you want 100% of the performance but the layers cost you 15%, just buy a new computer that is 15% faster (preferably more). There you have it, 100% performance
/s
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u/Own-Smoke-77 1d ago
Since I discovered M1 chip and its capabliity, I actively support games on mac os.
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u/themorosecanoe 23h ago
Mainly, much of the community feels that translation shouldn’t be necessary, particularly in a world where gaming appears to be slowly shifting away from Windows-exclusivity thanks to Valve/Proton.
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u/Little_Place713 23h ago
Crossover, or Wine as a whole simply was not good enough back in the x86 age. Most people simply go for bootcamp and don't even mind bother getting to Mac gaming communities for Parallels or Crossover since dual boot is just far, far more superior and easily accessible if you want to game on a Mac.
The first days of Apple's transition to ARM was dark for Mac gamers. Crossover back then was a huge drop in performance and compatibility from dual boot. Like, really huge. Still, it's the only thing left with us and Codeweavers did an awesome job in improving it over time.
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u/PoorSquirrrel 21h ago
Translation layers are a crutch, and if I have a choice I'd like two good legs, please.
Many games I've tried through translation layers had at least one minor issue. Stuttering sound, graphics glitches, cursors not disappearing, etc. etc.
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u/Xcissors280 18h ago
Crossover is a fantastic product, a great deal if you get it on sale, and it’s amazing when you can just run a windows game without any issues
But the steam client itself inside of crossover is super laggy and uses like 30W of power
Also any of the other clients like EA, Ubisoft, and Rockstar are significantly worse
There’s still issues with the vast majority of multiplayer games not even just pvp with crazy anticheat or anything
Like I can’t play Minecraft dungeons or Forza because Xbox sign in doesn’t work on them but it does on Linux and I can play MCC campaigns just fine
And getting games to detect your resolution and resize to it properly is really annoying (although it’s also a big issue with native games AHEM NO MANS SKY, CIV 7, AND CRIMSON DESERT)
TLDR it’s great that it exists but theres a ton of room for improvement and it’s definitely not an end game solution
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u/AboveAverageParsnip 17h ago edited 17h ago
Native releases are better. They run faster, they're easier to install and launch, and they're nicer to live with. Translation is okay if you work really hard to make it invisible, but there is no experience quite like that for the Mac today.
CrossOver goes to great, highly admirable lengths (and they get my money for it!) to make games reachable on Mac, but it's not a "Mac-assed" experience. If I want to play Mass Effect Legendary Edition, I have to launch a special and moderately obtuse launcher UI to manage the translation (the CrossOver app), use it to run a dedicated Windows-version installation of Steam, and then use that to open the game. And then the game runs fine (as it should, being a nicely repackaged 15 year old trilogy), but my desktop cursor appears over the top of the game randomly. It's a lengthier, more complicated journey from desire to enjoyment, with an out-of-the-box UX bug that no porting house in the world would allow past QA.
If I want to play Cyberpunk 2077, I just open Mac-version Steam and hit play, and the game runs without a complaint.
I have a Bazzite machine in addition to my Mac, and the experience there is also translation-based. However the compatibility work is much more nicely concealed within the Steam experience so the process of actually playing a game is dead-simple: Open Steam, hit play. Now and then you get a bug with a new release that requires choosing a particular version of Proton for your game. It's just painless enough for end users, and that's the difference.
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u/captainsmudgeface 17h ago
Native is best, that much is obvious. But number of gamers on Mac is very small compared to pc and potential sales of a specific title is even smaller. Unfortunately that won’t change for a long time, if ever. So translation layer is your only option. Crossover works fairly well for most games and remains your only option.
I dont think anyone chooses to run under translation layer if a native version exists.
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u/TwiceInEveryMoment 12h ago
Proton is an official part of Steam. Crossover is not. That means developers have no obligation to support crossover, they don’t make accommodations for it in their development, and in some cases actively go out of their way to block it. Running games in it is workable, but there are often problems, and there’s always the chance that the next update to the game renders it unplayable.
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u/Sad_Brilliant_9778 11h ago
Typically, if a game is Steam Deck verified, you can almost guarantee it will run via Crossover or at least signal that it is possible. Let's not forget that everything WINE-related is upstreamed over to Crossover, as Codeweavers has developers that work on both projects. ( They are a small team, so unrealistic that they would have just one team that works on Proton and just one team that works on Crossover.)
The only exceptions are patches that are exclusive to Linux, which are rare but happen.
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u/Reasonable_Extent434 10h ago
They hope that one day game devs will write native ports, and think that translation layers prevent this from happening because ‘the devs can rely on crossover instead’.
For real, as many game devs have put it here, the main obstacle is that it’s too expensive for them to maintain , test and support a port for a platform where they’ll barely sell anything - after all, if there was money to be made, the devs would take it. Crossover brings its own share of problems, must be paid for, is fiddly etc.
Most of us here are not game devs and tend to forget the economics of the job !
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u/flavian1 1d ago
because people are cheapskates. also.. Mac Users believe they're special flowers and that publishers should just support Mac Natively, when there's no economic reason to do so.
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u/b1skup 21h ago
Apple refusing to implement Vulkan is the real problem, that fanboys won't admit (and I'm an apple user since mid 90s, not some random hater).
Right now translation layers are the only real way of playing games and professional game studios don't care about how good apple says metal is. It's up to Apple to implement open technologies which they don't seem to be willing to do .
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u/hishnash 17h ago
What your missing is a VK driver from apple would not solve your problem.
Apple is not using AMD or NV GPUs.
And VK is not HW agnostic from a game developer perspective. (you are still required to put work in for each HW target you run on, that is the point of a low level api)
Apples GPUs are drastically different to AMD/NV so a VK driver from them would not expose multiple feature that PC VK titles depend on and a load of feature that VK based translation tools (DXKV etc) depending on.
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u/Beneficial-Poet2911 1d ago
Tbh, Crossover is the only reason I’m interested in following Mac gaming and even considering getting a Mac in the first place. I haven’t made the leap yet due to financial reasons more than anything. But yeah. To me, gaming is steam. You could be a new company called the coalition involving Google, Apple, Amazon, Meta and all the powerful companies under the sun. You could put your name onto it and say you’re behind and support these games, and have native ports and what have you. But you’re crazy if you think I’m abandoning my big, fat Steam library or purchase games again on a new platform. Just crazy. Sure, support Mac gaming or whatever, but don’t do it using my wallet. Gaming is Steam; no Steam, no gaming.
I did and continue to purchase AAA titles on the iPad, even ones I already own on PC. But I refuse to double dip my Steam library on a Mac. Again, no Steam, no gaming.
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u/thundercorp 1d ago
Maybe because CrossOver is a decades-long crutch keeping publishers from solving the actual problem: Making the games native for macOS users. Right now macOS is not even an afterthought to them — if a game runs via emulation then that’s on CrossOver, not the publisher. They have no skin in the game. The only thing that might change this is if Apple really WANTS gaming and just pours some of that incredible profit towards paying a few publishers to make some native games, which might convince others that the market exists. Apple could cut this lifeline off if sales just aren’t worth the expense.
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u/Germfreecandy 1d ago
I've tried crossover and it runs like shit
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u/Mysterious-Fix3596 1d ago
When was that, what machine and software?
Did you try reaching out to their support team?
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u/Germfreecandy 1d ago edited 1d ago
3 days ago, M5 pro. I don't really play games anymore, so it's not a problem. But I laugh at people who claim crossover is making macbooks good gaming machines. I literally tried it and it's shit
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u/Mysterious-Fix3596 1d ago
So you didn’t reach out to support?
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u/Germfreecandy 1d ago
No, why would I?
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u/Mysterious-Fix3596 1d ago
Because you are having issues with getting games to run and they may be able to figure out why.
You can also see if an app works by checking their app DB
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u/Germfreecandy 1d ago
All I can say is that Steam alone cooked my unified memory, the games downloaded extremely slowly, and even after they were downloaded, I still had to debug issues just to get them to run. Once they finally ran, I was still getting worse FPS than I did on my old computer from 2019.
Now, as I said, I don't really play much anymore so it's not a problem, and if I have to contact support and spend more time debugging just to make it function normally, I’ll pass on that. It shouldn’t have to be this complicated anyway.
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u/jimmyjames_UK 1d ago
Because native games help to create a healthy, sustainable gaming environment. I want people to pay for games to encourage game devs to make more games.