Has it really been that long? Apparently so. Valve originally announced their rebranding of Steam Play with Proton back on August 21st, 2018. Seems like a good time for a quick reflection being halfway to a decade old now with the tech that gave rise to the Steam Deck.
macOS has made it difficult for both game developers and Wine developers to support the platform by letting their OpenGL support rot, removing 32-bit support, ignoring Vulkan and coming out with their own graphics API, Metal. Wine is in a worse state than on GNU/Linux. There aren’t many native games available for macOS.
That being said, your best bet is likely CrossOver. They employ the principle Wine developers, worked with Valve on Proton, and have put a lot of effort into supporting macOS. They’ve got a free trial with complete functionality you can try out.
But if the games you’re playing have native releases for macOS, that’s not something you need to worry about. There are just so few games available on macOS that I assumed they don’t. Now, I only have an Intel iMac which I never play games on so I couldn’t tell you how the newer ARM laptops perform.
I was aware of the Game Porting Toolkit announcement. In fact, I first learned of it from CodeWeavers, who noticed Apple used their code to develop it.
We are ecstatic that Apple chose to use CrossOver’s source code as their emulation solution for the Game Porting Toolkit. We have decades of experience creating ports with Wine, and we are very pleased that Apple is recognizing that Wine is a fantastic solution for running Windows games on macOS. We did not work with Apple on this tool, but we would be delighted to work with any game developers who try out the Game Porting Toolkit and see the massive potential that Wine offers. Our PortJump™ team has perfected the art and science of creating ports of Windows applications using our Wine technology, and we welcome inquiries about how we can help get your game working on macOS.
I don’t play games on macOS, but my understanding was the same as yours; that it was a testing tool for developers to test out how the game might work on macOS. That’s how it was presented. I didn’t think it was meant to be used by macOS users.
In any case, CrossOver is intended to be used by macOS users (and the GPT uses the same code, as enthusiastically explained above), and it has a good graphical interface. I think these factors make it obvious to recommend CrossOver as the canonical solution for playing Windows games on macOS.
macOS has made it difficult for both game developers and Wine developers to support the platform by letting their OpenGL support rot, removing 32-bit support, ignoring Vulkan and coming out with their own graphics API, Metal. Wine is in a worse state than on GNU/Linux. There aren’t many native games available for macOS.
That being said, your best bet is likely CrossOver. They employ the principle Wine developers, worked with Valve on Proton, and have put a lot of effort into supporting macOS. They’ve got a free trial with complete functionality you can try out.
But if the games you’re playing have native releases for macOS, that’s not something you need to worry about. There are just so few games available on macOS that I assumed they don’t. Now, I only have an Intel iMac which I never play games on so I couldn’t tell you how the newer ARM laptops perform.
This is very out of date. The new game porting toolkit makes it trivial to play most windows games.
Kind of. Its more aimed at developers to “port” the game rather than the end user. Saying that there will no doubt be a third party solution.
I was aware of the Game Porting Toolkit announcement. In fact, I first learned of it from CodeWeavers, who noticed Apple used their code to develop it.
I don’t play games on macOS, but my understanding was the same as yours; that it was a testing tool for developers to test out how the game might work on macOS. That’s how it was presented. I didn’t think it was meant to be used by macOS users.
In any case, CrossOver is intended to be used by macOS users (and the GPT uses the same code, as enthusiastically explained above), and it has a good graphical interface. I think these factors make it obvious to recommend CrossOver as the canonical solution for playing Windows games on macOS.