Valve updates the Steam app
Years after Apple shifted to Apple Silicon, and after an on-again, off-again effort by Valve, the company has finally issued a beta version of the Steam client.
There have been Apple Silicon games on Steam for a long time. But, only now, five years after Apple’s technology debut, is Steam finally hitting the endgame on a native client.
The latest beta, published late Thursday, has made the Steam Client and Steam Helper Universal apps.
The option to participate in the beta isn’t hidden, and doesn’t require a special set of permissions. In the Settings menu, there’s an Interface option. All the user has to do is opt into beta updates, and restart the client to get the new download.
In our brief testing this morning on a M1 Ultra Mac Studio the client performs as you’d expect it to. There don’t appear to be any user interface changes, nor anything of any note beyond the client being a Universal app.
The writing is on the wall for Intel Macs. Apple announced very early during the 2025 WWDC that macOS Tahoe will be the last version to fully support Intel Macs. There will be security updates for some time to come, though.
Worse for gamers is what Apple said about Rosetta 2 support. In the same State of the Platform presentation, Apple said that Rosetta 2 would end in the fall of 2027, with scaled back support for unmigrated games.
What scaled back means, exactly, isn’t clear. All Apple has said so far is that “we will keep a subset of Rosetta functionality aimed at supporting older unmaintained gaming titles, that rely on Intel-based frameworks.”
Apple isn’t likely to say anything more about it until the 2026 WWDC.
