Valve Does Its Homework the Night Before Deadline: Switches Steam to Run on Mac Chips Right as Apple Announces It’s Ditching Intel for Good

Incredible news if you are A) Me B) One of like three other people on Earth.

I’ve mentioned before that my 2020 MacBook Air is the best gaming laptop I’ve ever owned—not due to its power or versatility, but for its quiet performance and impressive battery life.

This is made possible by Apple’s custom M-series CPUs, moving away from Intel chips that have been standard since 2006. However, a problem emerged as most applications, including games, are built for x86 architecture and not ARM. Apple created Rosetta 2 to automatically translate x86 apps when they run on ARM.

But Apple recently hinted that Rosetta would become obsolete in the next two versions of macOS. So, Valve, which has neglected to release an Apple Silicon version of Steam, responded quickly to this and announced an ARM-compatible version in their Steam client beta.

The new Apple-native Steam is only available in beta, and can be activated through the app’s preferences. Initial tests show improvements in the Steam Overlay functionality and game recording.

Many users can now breathe easier knowing that Valve is committed to supporting Mac gamers, although they still make up a small segment of Steam’s user base.