Valve this week launched Counter-Strike 2, the extremely anticipated free improve for homeowners of Counter-Strike: International Offensive, however Mac homeowners had been left within the lurch on launch day, with the improve breaking the sport and seemingly no macOS model forthcoming.

The title’s launch on Wednesday pressured a 26GB replace for everybody with CS:GO, together with Mac customers, however after set up these on macOS quickly found that the replace basically makes the sport unplayable as a result of Steam subsequently makes an attempt to launch an executable file for Home windows. Some customers have needed to make use of a workaround to reverse the change and entry CS:GO, however it’s lower than preferrred.

Valve quietly eliminated the macOS image on Steam’s Counter-Strike product web page, whereas the one reference to this omission for Counter-Strike 2 seems in Valve’s official FAQ. A query about Mac assist is met with the response: “No. CS2 isn’t obtainable for Mac presently,” however supplies no extra data.

Regardless, Valve apparently did not adequately warn Mac customers, a lot of whom have racked up 1000’s of hours on CS:GO and spent a whole lot of {dollars} on stock purchases. One Mac gamer on Reddit wrote:

I’ve round 6,000 hours in CS:GO, about 500$ price of stock. Am I supposed to go away all that behind now? Simply cherish them as reminiscences of the previous by no means to be skilled once more? I actually believed Valve would have launched a macOS model CS2 too. They’ve publicly denounced Home windows’ gaming monopoly up to now. With MacOS Sonoma, highly effective Apple silicon chips, and Apple making strides to make gaming doable on Mac (and Valve’s dedication to creating their video games obtainable to everybody) I suppose we did not see this coming. Or perhaps we did, however we had been cussed. I suppose with Valve’s darling Steam Deck, macOS turned redundant to them as a strategy to problem home windows gaming monopoly. I’m sorry you guys needed to hear this, however I really feel so dissatisfied proper now, in myself and in Valve. I am certain most of you CS:GO gamers had been as excited and hopeful as I used to be for the sport’s launch.

Counter-Strike: International Offensive is without doubt one of the hottest and long-running video games on macOS, with a big group following, so the shortage of assist and transparancy from Valve for Mac customers upgrading to Counter-Strike 2 is all of the extra bewildering.

Primarily based on latest updates to the CS2 macOS depot, some customers consider a Mac model is in growth, however it could possible relate to Rosetta 2 relatively than a model that natively helps Apple silicon. With no phrase on the topic from Valve, this stays purely hypothesis.

The long-rumored sport, formally introduced in March, updates many much-loved maps, and makes use of Valve’s in-house Supply 2 engine, that includes sharper textures, extra reasonable lighting, and new geometry. We have reached out to Valve for touch upon this story and can replace readers if we hear again.

(Thanks, Scott!)