Steam on Mac: A Comprehensive Look at the State of Mac Gaming in 2025
Since its initial release for Mac OS X in 2010, Steam has been the go-to storefront and gaming platform for Mac users looking to play the latest titles. But in an industry dominated by Windows PCs, gaming on a Mac has always come with caveats. While the selection of Mac-compatible games on Steam has grown significantly over the years, it still pales in comparison to what‘s available on Windows.
To put some numbers to this, consider that as of February 2024, Steam hosts over 50,000 titles in total. Of those, just over 15,000 – or around 30% – support macOS, according to data from SteamDB. That‘s up from a mere 8% in 2012, but still means that the vast majority of Steam games are Windows-exclusive.
The gap looks even larger when you consider the most popular titles. Of the top 100 games on Steam by current player count, only 42 have Mac versions. And among the top 10, that number shrinks to just 3: Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, and Team Fortress 2, all Valve titles.
Understanding the Mac Gaming Landscape
To understand why the Mac gaming ecosystem looks like this, it helps to step back and look at the bigger picture of Apple‘s place in the PC market. While Apple‘s share of the overall PC market has grown steadily over the past decade, it‘s still dwarfed by Windows machines.
In Q4 2023, Apple shipped an estimated 7.9 million Macs worldwide according to data from Gartner, giving it a 12.6% market share. That‘s a record high for the company, but still a distant second to the combined 68.2 million units from Lenovo, HP, and Dell, the top Windows PC vendors.
The gap is even more pronounced when you zoom in on the subset of PCs used for gaming. The latest Steam Hardware Survey, a monthly opt-in survey of Steam users‘ system specs, shows that as of January 2024, 96.2% of Steam users are on Windows. Just 3.5% are using macOS, with the remaining 0.3% on Linux.
For game developers, these numbers make it clear that Windows is by far the most important platform to target. While there‘s certainly a non-trivial audience of Mac gamers, it‘s often not large enough to justify the extra development time and cost required to support another operating system.
This is especially true for games that push the boundaries of PC hardware. Because Apple focuses on sleek, integrated designs for its Macs, they often lack the beefy discrete GPUs and expansive cooling systems found in dedicated gaming PCs. Even a high-end MacBook Pro or iMac struggles to match the gaming performance of a midrange gaming laptop.
To quantify this performance gap, consider the results of some recent benchmarks. In tests conducted by Macworld in late 2023, a top-spec 16-inch MacBook Pro with an M2 Max processor and 32-core GPU achieved an average frame rate of 29 fps in Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 1920×1200 resolution and the "Highest" graphics preset.
A Dell XPS 15 gaming laptop with an Intel Core i7-12700H and Nvidia RTX 3060 GPU, meanwhile, averaged 84 fps in the same test. And while the M2 Max handily beats the integrated graphics in the Intel chip, it‘s still miles behind a mid-tier discrete GPU in terms of gaming performance.
Advantages of Gaming on Mac
All this isn‘t to say that Macs are completely unsuitable for gaming, or that you can‘t have a great gaming experience on a Mac. There are absolutely advantages to gaming on a Mac over a Windows PC.
For one, Macs generally have a reputation for being more user-friendly and less prone to bugs, crashes, and security issues than Windows PCs. While this is somewhat subjective and depends on the specific hardware and software in use, there‘s no denying that macOS‘s tight integration between hardware and software lends a level of stability.
This extends to the Steam client itself. While the Windows version of Steam is generally quite solid, the macOS version benefits from running on a more unified platform without the huge variety of hardware configurations seen in the Windows ecosystem. Anecdotally, I‘ve had far fewer issues with Steam updates, downloads, and glitches on my MacBook Pro than on my gaming PC.
Apple‘s cleaner, more streamlined approach to software also makes for a simpler plug-and-play experience when gaming with a controller. Where Windows often requires fiddling with drivers and control schemes, most popular controllers like the Xbox One and PlayStation DualShock work seamlessly with macOS‘s built-in gamepad support.
And while Apple Arcade, Apple‘s game subscription service, isn‘t available on Mac, many other Mac-compatible game services have popped up to fill the gap. Humble Choice, for instance, has offered a number of well-received Mac games like Void Bastards, Slay the Spire, and Forager as part of its monthly game bundles.
The Changing Winds of Mac Gaming
Looking ahead, there are a number of trends that could shake up the state of gaming on Mac. The first is Apple‘s ongoing transition from Intel processors to its own Apple Silicon chips, which began with the M1 in late 2020.
While these ARM-based chips have big advantages in terms of speed and battery life, they‘re fundamentally different from the x86 architecture used by Intel and AMD. That means games and other software built for Intel Macs won‘t run on newer Macs without emulation.
As of early 2024, Apple has nearly completed the transition across its lineup – only the Mac Pro desktop is still available with Intel chips. And while Rosetta 2, Apple‘s tool for automatically translating Intel software for Apple Silicon, works well for most games, it‘s not a perfect solution.
Some older Mac games that rely on outdated APIs or 32-bit code simply won‘t run on Apple Silicon. And even those that do generally take a small performance hit compared to running natively. It will likely be a few years before the entire Mac gaming library is updated for Apple‘s new chips.
At the same time, the games that have been updated run exceptionally well on Apple Silicon. The M1 chip already rivaled the best integrated GPUs from Intel and AMD, and newer chips like the M2 Max and M2 Ultra push performance even further.
Another trend that could be a game-changer (pun intended) for Mac gaming is the rise of cloud gaming services like Nvidia GeForce Now and Xbox Cloud Gaming. By allowing users to stream games from powerful servers to their device, these services bypass the hardware limitations that have always held back gaming on Mac.
Historically, Mac support for these services has been spotty – GeForce Now, for instance, is still in beta on macOS as of early 2024, and Amazon Luna has yet to add Mac support at all. But as the technology matures and more Macs shift to Apple Silicon, the stage is set for cloud gaming to bring high-end PC titles to Mac with no porting required.
Perhaps the biggest wildcard is the Steam Deck, Valve‘s handheld gaming PC that launched in early 2022. While the device runs on a custom Linux-based OS, it‘s explicitly designed to play the entire Steam library through a combination of native support and the Proton compatibility layer.
The Steam Deck has been a huge success, selling millions of units and drawing praise for its ability to play demanding AAA games on the go. And while it‘s not a Mac product, it does signal Valve‘s ambitions to expand the Steam ecosystem beyond the Windows desktop.
If Valve is willing to invest heavily in Linux gaming with the Steam Deck, it‘s not hard to imagine the company putting more resources towards macOS support as well. A rising tide lifts all boats, and a more robust Mac gaming ecosystem would benefit Valve and players alike.
The Takeaway
Gaming on Mac has come a long way since the days when your only options were Myst and Marathon. Today, Steam offers thousands of native Mac games, with more being added all the time. And technologies like Apple Silicon and cloud gaming could help close the gap with Windows PCs even further.
But despite this progress, Macs are still far from the first choice for serious gamers. The relatively small share of Mac users on Steam reflects the platform‘s second-class status in the gaming world, and most of the industry‘s resources still go towards developing for Windows first and foremost.
As a Mac gamer myself, I‘ve learned to appreciate the platform‘s strengths while being realistic about its limitations. I love that I can boot up Steam on my MacBook Pro and jump into a game of Civilization or Stardew Valley without worrying about drivers or updates. And I‘m genuinely excited to see how Apple Silicon evolves over the coming years to enable even better gaming performance.
At the same time, I know that I simply can‘t play many of the games my friends are talking about, at least not without a lot of extra setup and compromise. For the foreseeable future, Windows PCs will continue to dominate the gaming landscape – but Macs are slowly but surely carving out their niche.
For now, the best advice I can give to fellow Mac gamers is to temper your expectations, but don‘t be afraid to dive in and see what the platform has to offer. With a little patience and an open mind, you might just be surprised at how much fun you can have gaming on your Mac.
