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Counter-Strike 2 drops Mac support, despite Apple’s gaming pursuits

Valve said that Mac users accounted for less than one percent of Counter-Strike players.
CS2 Counter-Strike 2

With the official release of Counter-Strike 2, the sequel to Valve’s enduring and ever-popular competitive tactical shooter series, the developer has announced that the game will no longer support Mac operating systems, as well as older PC hardware – DirectX9 and 32-bit operating systems specifically.

Counter-Strike 2 will exclusively support 64-bit Windows and Linux systems moving forward, with Mac users able to access a legacy version of the previous iteration of the game, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) – though support for this version will end on 1 January 2024, and it will not feature official matchmaking.

Valve remarked that Mac users and those running 32-bit operating systems made up “less than one percent of active CS:GO players”.

Counter-Strike 2 represents the largest technical leap in CS history, and our goal is to continue to develop Counter-Strike for years to come,” the company said in a statement. “As technology advances, we have made the difficult decision to discontinue support for older hardware.”

The announcement comes at an unfortunate time, as Apple steadily increases its commitment and support for gaming on Mac and iOS. A recent shift from Intel processors to the company’s own Apple Silicon chips has seen a significant improvement in the performance of high-end, current-generation video games.

We were taken aback by how well Resident Evil Village ran on an M1 Macbook Pro, and the company has now rolled out a new iteration of this hardware. The company also announced that games like Resident Evil, Assassin’s Creed, and Death Stranding would soon be available to play on iPhone 15 Pro phones.

Apple’s hardware is clearly capable of running games very well, and it seems like the company is trying to court more developers to increase the platform’s game catalog, and grow the gaming userbase. Counter-Strike 2‘s removal of Mac support is a blow, given it remains one of the most popular games today.

Thankfully, Valve’s Dota 2 is still playable on Mac. For now.

Counter-Strike 2 is free to play on PC via Steam.

Edmond was the founding managing editor of GamesHub. He was also previously at GameSpot for 13 years, where he was the Australian Editor and an award-winning video producer. You can follow him @EdmondTran