Mac Gaming, Crypto Credit Cards, iOS 15, with Jeff Butts – ACM 553
Bryan Chaffin and Jeff Butts talk about the current state of Mac gaming, with Jeff focusing on improved Mac support at Steam. They also dive deeper into crypto credit cards where you can either spend your crypto and/or earn cryptocurrency rewards like Bitcoin on your purchases. And, Jeff has been deep into iOS 15 betas, and he talks about some of his favorite new features.
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Show Notes
Sources referenced in this episode:
-
- Steam Community
- iOS 15 Coverage
- Coinbase - Bryan's affiliate link
- BlockFi - Bryan's affiliate link
- SoFi
- Apple Context Machine Facebook Group – Facebook
- Bryan's Twitter
- Bryan's Instagram
- Bryan's blog: GeekTells
- Jeff Gamet's Twitter
- Jeff Gamet's Instagram
- Jeff Gamet's YouTube Channel
I’ve been using Steam for Mac gaming for a decade or so now (although, as you observed, less than I once did). I appreciate their including Mac games on the platform but I also find it a frustrating experience at times.
Some of this is a Steam issue. The Steam support experience for Macs isn’t good. My last interaction with them was over a game that I purchased a year ago that wouldn’t install on macOS. It appeared to be a macOS-specific problem with Steam support in their installer. I went back and forth with them for a while and despite my mentioning in every single message I sent them that I was using macOS every single reply had troubleshooting information for Windows instead. It certainly wasn’t something that they were prepared to even understand, much less fix. I eventually gave up, requested a refund (that part, at least, was easy) and purchased it on another platform (itch.io).
While there are some games with macOS support on Steam, it looks to me like the vast majority of what’s available is Windows only. Any list that I don’t filter for macOS support is swamped by Windows games. There are some newer games with macOS support but much of what’s available is older games from small developers. That’s a second issue. Many of those older games are 32-bit and so not supported on anything newer than macOS Mojave. That’s not Steam’s fault, but it does mean that a significant fraction of my current macOS games library has no future and that some games with macOS available to purchase on Steam are also dead-ended. The overall feeling to me is that macOS is a platform that continues to have very poor games support.
Perhaps that’s excepting Apple Arcade (not something I’ve tried).