If you were one of the few gamers enjoying virtual reality on a Mac system, then we have some bad news: Valve is dropping support for the entire MacOS ecosystem on SteamVR. The reason is that it wants to focus its efforts on the Windows and Linux platforms, which still have small, but much healthier VR ecosystems.
"SteamVR has ended macOS support so our team can focus on Windows and Linux," Valve explained in its announcement. "We recommend that macOS users continue to opt into the SteamVR [macos] branches for access to legacy builds. Users can opt into a branch by right-clicking on SteamVR in Steam, and selecting Properties… -> Betas."
This isn't just a Valve pushed decision, even if it did make the call itself. Valve originally cooperated with Apple on creating the VR support on MacOS, but since Apple has effectively ended its own VR endeavours, at least publicly, it's said that there's no way it can continue to support the development of MacOS VR on its own.
That's a shame, but understandable, as it looks to grow the medium on its own hardware and platforms.
MacOS users will still be able to play VR content using legacy builds, but over the coming years it is likely that older games will work less and less well, and newer games will not include functionality for MacOS as they base their API support on newer builds of SteamVR.
