> . But now with the market share they have… Hard to ignore as a busines
That is not true at all. Ignoring Mac as a gamedev is one of the easiest decisions we've ever made at every studio I worked at. Even the studio where the boss used a Mac! The market share is minuscule and lacks even the Steamdeck and proton pushing linux support into Steam games.
That Apple saw fit to half-effort this tooling then lock it behind a license which prevents gamedevs shipping with it, and steam from packaging it, means Apple has yet again demonstrated their time tested poor support for games.
Statcounter is websites, games are not websites and you need to use an appropriate data source. Steam reports 1-2% for Mac users. My own game's wishlist stats are showing Mac is less popular than linux!
> My own game's wishlist stats are showing Mac is less popular than linux!
If you're talking about Railgrade (from your bio), couldn't that simply be because your game only shows as supporting Windows? Why would a Mac user wishlist a game they can't play? Linux users have had Proton for a few years now and the discussed Mac toolkit was only announced a couple days ago.
The platform wishlist breakdown occurs when players make a specific choice. Players use it as a "vote" for their platform. Thus Linux users are voting for Linux trying to convince us as devs to support them, Mac users are doing likewise.
If the Linux users were vastly out of line, I'd question them. Instead they are inline with the Steam survey. Anyway, the idea that Mac users are not big games is about as controversial as the color of the sky.
That makes sense. I was just a bit confused. I wasn't aware that's how the wishlist was used by some. With that said, I imagine Linux users are probably more familiar with that use than Mac users (i.e., power user vs. casual user). But, if it's representative of the Steam survey, then I suppose it's as good a metric as any.
Regardless, I definitely didn't mean to imply that Mac users are big gamers. Most Macs are MacBooks and most people don't buy a laptop primarily for gaming. It'd be a secondary concern. There's also a chicken and egg situation in which Mac users may not be big gamers because there's not many games for Macs (not to mention that Steam runs terribly and is buggy on M-series Macs). Any Mac users that are big gamers probably have a console and/or PC (like myself) due to this situation, so any wishlisting is done on the device I play games on, despite the desire to be able to play on the go on my MacBook. Any Mac users that aren't big gamers may be due to having limited games. My wife who isn't a big gamer, but does like to play games occasionally, is relegated to using Bootcamp on her iMac.
Of course, that’s assuming that Steam is where all Mac users go to get games. Some of the bigger Mac titles like World of Warcraft aren’t on Steam, so it’s not hard to imagine a Mac user who more casually games not bothering to download Steam because their needs are met elsewhere.
Lag time in port availability also probably factors in too. If you open Steam on a Mac you’re shown a bunch of brand new games without Mac ports… if you don’t dig a little deeper it gives one the impression that they don’t have many Mac games and isn’t worth bothering with.
It does not sound like you have a better data source and are working backwards to explain the discrepancy.
Instead it sounds like you are reaching for excuses to ignore what you wish to be not-true. You clearly care a lot about gaming on Mac. Sadly Apple does not care. Hence how a rather decent US PC market share translates to trivial games market share.
When Apple starts caring they have the money to buy ports. There is no need for excuses.
I would say I care more about games being multiplatform by default (as most other software is now) than I do specifically Mac gaming. For playing games I have a custom built Windows tower, but would rather that not be necessary. While the situation has improved dramatically on Linux in the past few years it still has notable gaps (practically all of VR for example), and so the Windows partition persists.
That is not true at all. Ignoring Mac as a gamedev is one of the easiest decisions we've ever made at every studio I worked at. Even the studio where the boss used a Mac! The market share is minuscule and lacks even the Steamdeck and proton pushing linux support into Steam games.
That Apple saw fit to half-effort this tooling then lock it behind a license which prevents gamedevs shipping with it, and steam from packaging it, means Apple has yet again demonstrated their time tested poor support for games.