Valve ends SteamVR support for macOS, three years after Apple announced it at WWDC; Valve's survey found only 4% of Steam users were using macOS
Valve just ended SteamVR's support for macOS. ‘Legacy builds’ will continue to be available. — SteamVR is Valve's PC-based virtual reality platform, supporting Windows andLinux.
UploadVRDavid Heaney
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple pitched Mac VR on stage at WWDC 2017, with Federighi announcing SteamVR alongside a Thunderbolt 3 eGPU enclosure built around AMD's Radeon RX 580 — but the audience never showed up: Valve's own hardware survey put macOS at just 4% of Steam users, and today it cut native support, keeping only legacy builds.
The move fits an established Valve pattern of retiring platforms once telemetry says they're marginal: it pulled the SteamOS-based Steam Machines from the store front page in 2018 amid waning interest, and ended Steam support for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 last year citing a sub-1% user base. Where Apple usage is real, Valve still ships — Steam Link reached iOS and Apple TV in 2019 after its App Store rejection.
First-order effects
Mac owners running SteamVR are frozen on legacy builds — no new features, fixes, or support for current headsets — while developers who targeted SteamVR on macOS lose a shipping platform overnight.
Valve's engineering effort consolidates on Windows andLinux, the two platforms the description confirms SteamVR now supports natively.
Second-order effects
Valve's own VR roadmap compounds the retreat: with the PC-tethered Index no longer in production after the Steam Frame unveiling, there is less tethered-PC VR hardware of any kind to justify a macOS client.
Microsoft's earlier removal of Minecraft's VR and MR support shows the same direction among platform holders — native desktop VR is narrowing toward Windows, pushing Mac users toward streaming clients like Steam Link instead of local runs.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, platform support becomes a telemetry-gated decision: Valve retires any OS whose surveyed share falls below a threshold, making 'supported forever' promises from keynote stages structurally unreliable.
Cross-platform VR development consolidates around a single dominant desktop target, raising the cost for minority-OS users and shifting Apple's role from native host to streaming endpoint.
The trend: Platform-holder support lifecycles are increasingly set by usage-share telemetry rather than launch-stage commitments, with VR specifically consolidating on Windows as the sole first-class desktop target.
@GothPanda I'm really surprised that Valve continues to support the Mac at all, but it's no surprise that VR support would be the first to go. Looking back on my time with MacOS, I feel like I was starved for games. If Macs go ARM, as rumoured, I'm sure Valve will be done with th…
@gruber Barely any games, like low single digit, ever seemed to support it, and you needed an eGPU to even use it with a Vive headset. Apple doesn't make gaming Macs, Valve but little effort into it, and devs didn't port/make games.
@UGEplex @_tlr_ clear that Apple cares about XR/spatial concerns, but doubt they will ever care about SteamVR, and probably have different plans that looks more like their own ecosystem. If VR future looks more like Quest than Vive, Steam might lose some foothold
“Valve ends SteamVR support for macOS, three years after Apple announced it at WWDC; Valve's survey found only 4% of Steam users were using macOS” Um. MacOS has less than 7 percent marketshare, so this percentage is actually pretty high. What did Steam expect?
I wonder how much longer steam will support macos or vice versa. The ARM rollover will likely have heavy focus on the App Store anyway. Dropping SteamVR is not shocking might as well focus on full featured desktop VK platforms going forward.
@FznAlm @hishnash @SnazzyQ From everything I've seen, there is no way Valve would shut down Steam for macOS and deny its customers on that platform access to what they have purchased. They shut down VR due to a scuttle with Apple.
@reneritchie @gruber There were a number of OpenGL games that could have easily been ported but since there was no market for it. I emailed two devs a few years back since there was only ONE Mac VR game on Steam and they got me macOS builds of their games compiled and playable wi…
@jimmyjamesuk123 @colincornaby They lost Nate Brown, who was working on Valve macOS VR. Best guess is they simply can't (or tried and couldn't) replace him.
SteamVR ends macOS support, 3 years after big WWDC '17 support announcement. :p IIUC, those plans ran aground in early 2018 when Apple rejected SteamLink from App Store. Dispute was finally resolved in 2019. Wonder what issues persisted. Drivers? Impending competition for XR?
@daringfireball You can see how relevant the Mac is to gaming when the owner of the largest digital distribution platform in the world calls macOS “OSX”. (Btw, Valve has supported the Mac platform for 10 years, during most of which Apple could not have cared less about gaming on …
@reneritchie @gruber I'd argue Valve actually did a rather great job. I'd shift blame on Apple by pretending like they cared in their keynotes a few years ago and then doing nothing other than add eGPU support. Apple never supported OpenXR or Vulkan insisting on Metal despite dow…
@reneritchie @gruber I don't know what else Valve was supposed to do? They ported Steam, they supported SteamVR, and they ported their entire software catalog to Mac. This whole thing just makes me laugh cause Gabe Newell said this about Apple in 2007 and it seems much hasn't cha…
@jimmyjamesuk123 @colincornaby Valve aren't dropping the Mac, but they are most likely distracted by something shinier. They have the attention span of a goldfish. That goldfish is no longer looking at macOS VR. See also: SteamOS, Steam Link, Steam Controller, VOGL, Half-Life 2 a…
@SnazzyQ @gruber Yeah, some devs were kind enough to give me some builds as well. My point was, Apple never made a real VR-capable Mac (eGPU is a bigger ask) and neither Apple nor Valve evangelized Steam on Mac. Which would be fine if it was never announced...
@flargh “SteamVR has ended macOS support so our team can focus on Windows and Linux” That's what really hurts... they drop macOS, but LINUX stays around? WTF?