Steam ending support for macOS Mojave and earlier

Steam has kept support for macOS Mojave and macOS High Sierra alive so far to keep 32-bit games running on older Macs, but that support is ending on February 15.

Steam is a multi-platform game storefront and distributor available on Mac and PC. It hosts thousands of games and is the most popular place to get video games on computers.

Macs may not be known for gaming, but it's always been possible to run many titles, even from Steam. However, Steam is ending support for older versions of macOS as of February 15, 2024.

From Steam's statement:

As of February 15th, 2024, Steam will officially stop supporting the macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) and 10.14 (Mojave) operating systems. After that date, existing Steam Client installations on these operating systems will no longer receive updates of any kind including security updates. Steam Support will be unable to offer users technical support for issues related to the old operating systems, and Steam will be unable to guarantee continued functionality of Steam on the unsupported operating system versions.

Apple stopped supporting macOS High Sierra in 2020 and macOS Mojave in 2021. Steam continued to offer basic updates and support for its client on these operating systems since it was the only way to play 32-bit games.

After the cutoff date, Steam won't be able to guarantee the functionality of games on older systems. Steam reports that 98% of users are already running macOS Catalina or later, so very few users will be affected.

Users stuck on these older operating systems are urged to update to the latest macOS available if possible. Those older operating systems are vulnerable to exploits that have been patched in newer updates.

Steam will cease updating its client for macOS High Sierra and macOS Mojave on February 15, 2024.

6 Comments

lowededwookie 16 Years · 1175 comments

About 1 year ago

Oh, great. That means I won’t be able to play Rocksmith 2014.

Rocksmith+ sucks because there’s no Mac version and I can’t seem to use the Rocksmith cable with iOS.

cia 21 Years · 269 comments

Portal, Portal 2, Peggle, Peggle Nights, Bioshock Infinite. The only reason I still have an old machine working is to play these games. The fact the developers won't update the games is already a pain, now Steam is killing support on their end also?

These aren't no name games either.

You can't even buy an updated version anywhere for any of these games. They are literally killing them unless you have a old machine around dedicated to just these.

eriamjh 17 Years · 1772 comments

I don’t have a dedicated machine for playing Half Life 2 in Mojave, but u could make a partition just for playing it once a year or when I’m reminded of its existence.

Blizzard 3 Years · 49 comments

cia said:

Portal, Portal 2, Peggle, Peggle Nights, Bioshock Infinite. The only reason I still have an old machine working is to play these games. The fact the developers won't update the games is already a pain, now Steam is killing support on their end also?

These aren't no name games either.

You can't even buy an updated version anywhere for any of these games. They are literally killing them unless you have a old machine around dedicated to just these.

I would be surprised if Valve, the developers of Steam and the Portal games, didn't have them running natively on the latest Mac OS already.

Marvin 18 Years · 15355 comments

cia said:

Portal, Portal 2, Peggle, Peggle Nights, Bioshock Infinite. The only reason I still have an old machine working is to play these games. The fact the developers won't update the games is already a pain, now Steam is killing support on their end also?

These aren't no name games either.

You can't even buy an updated version anywhere for any of these games. They are literally killing them unless you have a old machine around dedicated to just these.

They aren't quite killing them, they are old enough games that they run pretty well in virtualization/emulation software.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmnmiznpVcQ

https://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/crossover/bioshock-infinite

Apple deprecating OpenGL was a massive roadblock for a lot of developers. Having to port to Metal is no small feat and developers can't do months-long overhauls of old games for a single digit percent of players. Valve said they dropped support due to Mac players being less than 1% of active players.

Not to mention some of the companies don't exist any more. Irrational Games that made Bioshock isn't around any more. The publisher would have to put together a whole new development team.

The good news is that Apple seems committed to Metal and this is why Windows games have such long support life because of DirectX so new games on Metal should be supported for a long time and we're not going above 64-bit. ARM 64 should be the final/forever platform for Apple. While it would be nice to see native versions of classic games migrate to this long-term supported format, with the way GPUs have been progressing, these old games will run smoothly in compatibility software.

Worst case, it's possible to by a cheap PC handheld device and stream the output to the Mac:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpSmJ4PlHAE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FP8_tu4zSLE

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-rog-ally-7-120hz-fhd-1080p-gaming-handheld-amd-ryzen-z1-extreme-processor-512gb-white/6542964.p?skuId=6542964

$600 and that will handle any games that aren't native on Mac going back 30 years. Dock it somewhere and stream to the Mac system.