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OS X Steam - I don't get it

I have about 300 games in my Steam library. i have been using it for about 7 years and run it on OSX and Windows.

I have had very little issue with it. The price of games is great and getting both OSX and Windows versions of some games is just the icing on the cake.

I normally make a point of buying from Steam over and above anywhere else.
 
Sue De Nimes said:
I have about 300 games in my Steam library. i have been using it for about 7 years and run it on OSX and Windows.

I have had very little issue with it. The price of games is great and getting both OSX and Windows versions of some games is just the icing on the cake.

I normally make a point of buying from Steam over and above anywhere else.
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Unlike GoG you have to BUY both versions :(
 
Suture said:
I never really had issues with Steam when I had a PC, but ever since I went full-Mac, wow.
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Just to give a different perspective: For me it's the opposite. Steam on Mac has always worked fine, but on Windows I'll regularly get some strange bugs forcing me to flush configurations or re-install a game. (Just last night I spent an hour getting Rome: Total War to run, and then it crashed 20 minutes into the first battle. :( ) Personally, I think this is just what happens when you have a huge installed base. Some people on every OS are going to have problems, others won't.

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Washac said:
Unlike GoG you have to BUY both versions :(
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While it is up to the publishers to offer combined purchases, im my experience, most Steam purchases are multi-platform. Even Sim City 4 recently showed up in my Mac library years after I'd bought it for Windows.

The are some exceptions to this, but those really seem to be in the minority.
 
Baumi said:
Just to give a different perspective: For me it's the opposite. Steam on Mac has always worked fine, but on Windows I'll regularly get some strange bugs forcing me to flush configurations or re-install a game. (Just last night I spent an hour getting Rome: Total War to run, and then it crashed 20 minutes into the first battle. :( ) Personally, I think this is just what happens when you have a huge installed base. Some people on every OS are going to have problems, others won't.

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While it is up to the publishers to offer combined purchases, im my experience, most Steam purchases are multi-platform. Even Sim City 4 recently showed up in my Mac library years after I'd bought it for Windows.

The are some exceptions to this, but those really seem to be in the minority.
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They may be mutli platform but you HAVE to BUY the version for each platform.

There are the same games on GoG and steam in many cases and on steam you have to BUY every platform version, on GoG you pay once and can download all platform versions.
 
Washac said:
They may be mutli platform but you HAVE to BUY the version for each platform.

There are the same games on GoG and steam in many cases and on steam you have to BUY every platform version, on GoG you pay once and can download all platform versions.
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That is exactly the way it works for most Steam games. It's called "SteamPlay": You buy it once, it works on many platforms.

Here's the current list of OS X games for Steam, the icons after each game indicate which platforms the purchase is good for.

Again, some publishers chose to forego SteamPlay and release separate items for each platform, but, as you can see, most purchases are cross-platform. (If the games themselves are cross-platform in the first place, of course.)
 
It starts very slowly, a few dozens MB per hours. Basically you let steam do its thing (update's, etc.) and then it starts to happen on the background. I noticed because usually I don't close that many apps.

And it is indeed steam. Years ago Emacs had that problem too, but now it is steam.

Steam Forums
 
Washac said:
They may be mutli platform but you HAVE to BUY the version for each platform.

There are the same games on GoG and steam in many cases and on steam you have to BUY every platform version, on GoG you pay once and can download all platform versions.
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Lies.

If a game is Steamplay compatible, you only need to buy it once to gain access to it on any platform where it is compatible. The only game I know of that has an OS X port, but is not Steamplay is Call of Duty: Black Ops.
 
Baumi said:
That is exactly the way it works for most Steam games. It's called "SteamPlay": You buy it once, it works on many platforms.

Here's the current list of OS X games for Steam, the icons after each game indicate which platforms the purchase is good for.

Again, some publishers chose to forego SteamPlay and release separate items for each platform, but, as you can see, most purchases are cross-platform. (If the games themselves are cross-platform in the first place, of course.)
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Thanks for the correction, I was unaware of that.
 
Washac said:
Unlike GoG you have to BUY both versions :(
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Try Humble then. The "Humble Model" is similar to GOG. Firstly, many cross-platform games on Humble are sold as DRM-free (just like GOG). With Humble, you buy one game and you have access to whatever versions are available — Mac/PC/Steamplay/Linux etc. Your Humble Library also gives you direct access to your game's "Steam Keys", should you ever lose it or forget the keys. For example, I purchased the Mac version of FTL, but I can always go back and re-download (for free) the Windows version into my old Windows PC. I could also come back months from now and re-claim the Steam key for the same game, although I don't use Steam at this time.
 
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Washac said:
They may be mutli platform but you HAVE to BUY the version for each platform.
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Nonsense. It is very rare that a title is not Steamplay eligible, meaning the vast majority of games on Steam you only buy once for all platforms it supports. Valve encourage all developers and publishers to allow their titles to use Steamplay, even porting houses such as Aspyr and Feral allow it.
 
roadbloc said:
Nonsense. It is very rare that a title is not Steamplay eligible, meaning the vast majority of games on Steam you only buy once for all platforms it supports. Valve encourage all developers and publishers to allow their titles to use Steamplay, even porting houses such as Aspyr and Feral allow it.
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I was corrected on this fact.
 
Strange, I have Steam set to load on boot (good way to just have games update in the background). I've never had a problem with game saves not syncing with the cloud services. In fact it's been too good for me! If I want to start a new game and delete the old save, reloading the game will download my previous save! Heh. Maybe there's something on your computer preventing syncs from happening? I had to (on Windows) set up a startup script to launch Steam only when it detected an internet connection.
 
I'm using Steam for 11 years now, gosh how time has passed and never had a single problem. I think most problems appear with certain system configurations.
 
I have Steam on my Mac + a boot camp partition for Steam games without a Mac version.

Steam is running fine on my Mac for years and the boot camp partition is almost never used anymore.
 
I'm using Steam quite often, almost daily. When I launch it, runs a check, updates if it needs to and usually I'm in my game in short order. This is not to imply I've never experienced glitches, I have, but mostly I dont.
 
Sue De Nimes said:
Not on anything I have every bought. Once it is on Steam you get whatever versions are available on Steam. They even have a name for it "Steamplay"

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=9439-QHKN-1308
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yes but that in itself isn't the whole story, as unfortunately there are a lot of games on steam for pc, that get mac versions but they aren't on steam so you'd have to buy them separately from the mac store or wherever. looking at my own steam account i have the following games that i can't play the mac version unless i buy it elsewhere.

bioshock
bioshock 2
borderlands
company of heroes
doom 3
fallout
fallout 2
LOTR war in the north
mafia 2
rome total war
 
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madeirabhoy said:
yes but that in itself isn't the whole story, as unfortunately there are a lot of games on steam for pc, that get mac versions but they aren't on steam so you'd have to buy them separately from the mac store or wherever. looking at my own steam account i have the following games that i can't play the mac version unless i buy it elsewhere.
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That's dirty old publishers for you. They've started seeing the light at least. :D
 
I don't know where you're coming from, but Steam has always been a fantastic place to buy / play games for me. Though not for OS X, I pre-ordered Alien: Isolation last night, and am so ready to crap my pants come Tuesday :D

The pre-load feature is great, so you can have the game downloaded, and then play it the instant it releases.
 
madeirabhoy said:
yes but that in itself isn't the whole story, as unfortunately there are a lot of games on steam for pc, that get mac versions but they aren't on steam so you'd have to buy them separately from the mac store or wherever. looking at my own steam account i have the following games that i can't play the mac version unless i buy it elsewhere.

bioshock
bioshock 2
borderlands
company of heroes
dead space
doom 3
fallout
fallout 2
LOTR war in the north
mafia 2
mass effect
rome total war
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Dead Space and Mass Effect don't have OS X ports.
 
Pfft....

The fact that it HAS resource leaks that require quitting and re-opening it (or rebooting the whole machine if it's gotten to far out of hand) means the app is NOT "rock solid"!

The Mac version of Steam is "usable" for me, but far from stable and reliable. I've had at least twice now where the auto update process for it failed -- causing it to prompt to do the same update over and over, each time I launched it, and never completing it. The rest of the time, it's just like others here are saying: It's sluggish, taking a long time to cloud sync and quit when you tell it to close down, and causes memory leaks if you leave it running in the background for too long at a time.


GoldfishRT said:
I had problems with the Mac version of Steam when it was first released but it has been rock solid other than the occasional resource leak that's easily fixed by quitting and reopening the application. The Windows build has always worked perfectly for me. Haven't had a problem with offline mode even in years which was the only thing I ever really had wrong.

If I have any issue with Steam it's their support. It's absolutely awful.
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kingtj said:
The fact that it HAS resource leaks that require quitting and re-opening it (or rebooting the whole machine if it's gotten to far out of hand) means the app is NOT "rock solid"!

The Mac version of Steam is "usable" for me, but far from stable and reliable. I've had at least twice now where the auto update process for it failed -- causing it to prompt to do the same update over and over, each time I launched it, and never completing it. The rest of the time, it's just like others here are saying: It's sluggish, taking a long time to cloud sync and quit when you tell it to close down, and causes memory leaks if you leave it running in the background for too long at a time.
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I had this exact same problem when I ran steam under Bootcamp, I deleted it and then it would just would not even install again after that. Steam support had no idea what the problem was and just left me hanging there with no resolve to the issue, thanks steam really appreciated, does not matter that you have the cash for the PC games I had purchased, easy to remove the games from my library I would think and give me my cash back.

They did not even respond to my last reply on the support ticket that what they suggested had not worked.

Before anybody mentions I had two accounts with steam one for Mac and one for PC so no steamplay possible not that the games had Mac Versions anyway.
 
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Update since my last post in this thread... I've had some better performance out of Steam (Mac client). My games are no longer taking a few minutes to shutdown.

However the Friends list is never synchronized properly with statuses. It rarely shows me when a friend is playing a game, and sets their statuses as "online" as of the time *I* logged in. However after some digging around, I see many are complaining about this in the past few weeks. I'm just happy I don't have to force quit a bunch of games anymore.
 
Forgive for sounding stupid here but if I am logged into my steam account via my Mac and go to my Library where do I see which games in my library are also available to me on a PC IE: Steamplay ?
 
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