But for Mac gamers, Steam is more than just a way to find Mac-compatible games. It’s also a way to play any game in your entire library, even if it’s Windows-only. It’s thanks to a newer technology from Valve known as In-Home Streaming. Best phone games for flights. Here’s the bad news, upfront: you still need a Windows PC for this to work. How to play windows steam games on mac 2018. How To Install Play Windows Steam Games Software on MacOS with Wineskin.

Native Mac Gaming RELATED: Like Linux, Mac OS X has gained more and more PC gaming support over the years. In the old days, you’d have to look elsewhere for Mac games. When the rare game was ported to Mac, you’d have to purchase the Mac-only version to run it on your Mac.

These days, many of the games you already own probably have Mac versions available. Some game developers are more cross-platform than others — for example, all of Valve’s own games on Steam and Blizzard’s games on Battle.net support Mac. The big digital PC gaming storefronts all have Mac clients. You can install,,, and the on your Mac. If you’ve purchased a game and it already supports Mac, you should have access to the Mac version immediately. If you purchase the game for Mac, you should have access to the Windows version, too. Even games available outside of storefronts may offer Mac versions.

For example, supports Mac, too. Don’t underestimate the games available for Mac OS X itself. Boot Camp RELATED: While more games support Mac OS X than ever, many games still don’t. Every game seems to support Windows — we can’t think of a popular Mac-only game, but it’s easy to think of popular Windows-only games. Boot Camp is the best way to run a Windows-only PC game on your Mac. Macs don’t come with Windows, but you can and reboot into Windows whenever you want to play these games. This allows you to run Windows games at the same speeds they’d run at on a Windows PC laptop with the same hardware.

You won’t have to fiddle with anything — install Windows with Boot Camp and your Windows system will work just like a typical Windows system. Steam In-Home Streaming RELATED: The problem with Boot Camp is that it uses your Mac’s hardware. Macs with slower integrated graphics won’t be able to run demanding PC games well. If your Mac has a small hard drive, you may not be able to install both Windows and a huge game like the 48 GB PC version of Titanfall alongside Mac OS X.

If you already have a Windows PC — ideally a gaming PC with powerful enough graphics hardware, enough CPU power, and a big hard drive — you can to stream games running on your Windows PC to your Mac. This allows you to play games on your MacBook and do the heavy-lifting on your PC, so your Mac will stay cool and its battery won’t drain as quickly. You do have to be on the same local network as your Windows gaming PC to stream a game, so this isn’t ideal if you want to play PC games while away from your Windows desktop.

Other Options RELATED: There are other ways to play PC games on a Mac, but they have their own problems: Virtual Machines: are often the ideal way to run Windows desktop applications on your Mac, as you can run them on your Mac desktop. If you have Windows programs you need to use — perhaps a program you need for work — a virtual machine is very convenient.

However, virtual machines add overhead. This is a problem when you need your hardware’s maximum performance to run a PC game. Modern virtual machine programs have improved support for 3D graphics, but 3D graphics will still run much more slowly than they would in Boot Camp.