Valve’s Move to Native Apple Silicon: A Milestone for Mac Gamers

Valve has launched a major update to its Steam gaming client, delivering long-awaited native support for Apple Silicon Macs—five years after Apple’s transition to its proprietary M-series chips began. According to Valve’s official release notes and multiple technology reports (AppleInsider, 9to5Mac), this update is available now as a beta and represents a fundamental shift in how Steam runs on modern Macs.

Why This Matters for the Apple Ecosystem

Apple introduced its custom ARM-based Apple Silicon architecture in 2020, spurring a gradual migration away from Intel-based software. Most major third-party apps have since adopted native Apple Silicon support, but Steam’s client remained reliant on Rosetta 2 translation. This allowed the app to run but incurred notable performance and efficiency penalties, especially for the Chromium-based UI and resource-intensive features.

Valve’s beta update transitions both the