Valve has made the shocking announcement that its latest game, Counter-Strike 2, will be losing support on Mac and older PCs in the future. Counter-Strike 2 launched only a few weeks ago and has already been stirring up some controversy among a divided fanbase, with this latest update likely only adding to the heated discussion.
Valve was likely hoping that Counter-Strike 2 would be more of a universally recognized success than it has been since its September 27 release. A large reason for its recent “mixed” review status on Steam is the fact that the original CS:GO was de-listed in favor of Counter-Strike 2 being the sole way to experience the game moving forward. This makes Valve’s recent announcement that Mac and older PC users will be entirely losing access to Counter-Strike 2 all the more infuriating for some.
Mac Loses Counter-Strike 2
The announcement of the drop in support came via the game’s Steam support page recently. Valve says the loss of Mac and 32-bit system support is in the interest of expanding the technology of Counter-Strike 2 beyond what lower-end systems like those can handle. The post also mentions that the players affected by this decision “make up less than one percent of active CS:GO players.”
The announcement also includes that players unable to launch Counter-Strike 2 will have access to a legacy version of CS:GO that will remain active until January 1st, 2024. Overall, it doesn’t seem like too unfair a deal.
As Valve mentioned with their statistic, this change won’t affect the overwhelming majority of the game’s players, and if it lets the developer improve the game’s performance without being held back by the need to consider weaker computers, it likely benefits the game in the long run. Still, those few players who have been experiencing CS:GO on Mac or DirectX 9 for years will likely be hurt by this, and the number of players who question why CS:GO has disappeared in favor of this new version may only continue to grow.
