Steam for Mac will end support for High Sierra and Mojave, the last macOS versions that could run 32-bit games. Here’s what that means for gaming on those systems.
Valve announced that Steam’s games store will pull support for Mac computers running macOS High Sierra 10.13 and macOS Mojave 10.14 on February 15, 2024.
That’s bad news for people stuck with those old operating systems. Mojave was the last macOS version to support 32-bit games. Future updates to Steam’s Mac client will only support Catalina and above though Valve ensured the Steam client and games will continue running on High Sierra and Mojave systems “for some time.”
Steam ending support for macOS High Sierra and Mojave
After the cut-off date, High Sierra and Mojave users will no longer receive Steam updates, security patches and support. “Steam will be unable to guarantee continued functionality of Steam on the unsupported operating system versions.”
Apple chose to drop support for 32-bit applications in macOS 10.15 (released 2019), and since many developers have not updated their games to support 64-bit executables, some games will effectively stop functioning on macOS.
This shouldn’t affect too many people, however, as Valve claims that more than 98 percent of Steam Mac customers on Mac are on Catalina or newer.
“In order to ensure continued operation of Steam and new 64-bit games purchased through Steam, users on these older versions should update to a more recent version of macOS,” Valve said.
Why won’t Steam support older macOS versions?
This was a technical decision as Steam uses Chrome for certain features, and Google pulled support for macOS 10.13 and 10.14 from Chrome in mid-2023.
“If you are currently on High Sierra or Mojave, we encourage you to move to a supported macOS version to ensure you continue to receive the latest security updates and Chrome features,” Google wrote in a support document.
Another factor is that future Steam updates will rely on Mac features and security updates that are only present in Catalina and above.
Apple ended security updates and technical support for macOS 10.13 in December 2020 and macOS 10.14 in October 2021, so new exploits are no longer patched.