The Best Ways to Game on a Mac

Man of Many

a day ago

By Dean Blake - News
Published: 30 May 2025 |Last Updated: 29 May 2025
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Readtime: 8 min
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Look, we've all heard the jokes. Gaming on Mac is definitely not as easy, robust, or well supported as on almost any other system, especially when compared to gaming on Windows, but I'm a firm believer in using what you've got.
If you want to kill some time and already own a Mac, there are plenty of fantastic games you can run natively, and even more you can get going with a little bit of technical know-how or a can-do attitude. I'd never tell you to buy a Mac for gaming, but as a secondary feature it can be surprisingly robust.
The easiest way to game on a Mac would be to launch the App Store and pick something from there. It's literally pre-loaded onto every computer that Apple launches, and the games featured there are optimised very well to run on MacOS.
If you're looking for a bigger range of options, or even to play games that aren't supposed to run on your laptop, though, you've come to the right place. Here, we'll outline the options you have to get the most out of the surprisingly powerful piece of Apple Silicon sitting inside your computer.
Assassin's Creed Shadows | Image: Ubisoft
Apple's App Store and Apple Arcade
As I said above, it's incredibly easy to just open the App Store and browse the list of games available for download. An issue with the App Store, though, is that any purchase you make on that storefront is locked to the Apple eco-system. This is fine if you're a diehard Apple user, but if you even glance at a different OS you'll be starting from scratch again. It's also worth noting that games, on average, tend to be more expensive through the App Store.
Still, App Store games are often compatible across MacOS, tvOS, iOS and iPadOS, so if you're living in that world you'll get quite a bit of potential play across multiple devices.
Here are some of the best games available on Apple's App Store:
Plus, Apple launched its own game subscription service in 2024, Apple Arcade, which costs AUD$9.99 per month and gives you access to over 200 games to play across each of your Apple devices. It's definitely not a bad deal, and there are some great games in there, but you'll need to go digging past a lot of chaff to get to the wheat.
Here are some winners on Apple Arcade for your consideration:
MacBook Air (2025) playing Tunic through Steam | Image: Dean Blake/Man of Many
Third-Party Options: Steam, Epic, GOG, and Game Pass
Now we get to the meat. As with any other PC, you can download third-party storefronts onto a Mac and get access to a far wider range of games. Not every game on these storefronts are Mac compatible – in fact, most aren't – though you'll usually be warned before buying something incompatible with whatever system you're browsing on.
Still, it's worth taking a look at the major storefronts out there and what they bring to the table.
Steam is, hands down, the biggest gaming service in the world right now. When people brag about PC gaming, they're usually talking about Steam, and it's just about the best place to buy Mac games as well. Here, you'll find the biggest range of games available for purchase and play, as well as frequent flash sales.
There are plenty of games available on Steam for Mac, which makes it a fantastic place to start building a collection. If you're coming from a Windows PC, think you might build a gaming desktop, or are dreaming of grabbing a gaming handheld at some point in the future, Steam will probably be a cornerstone of your gaming experience.
The Epic Store, on the other hand, has far fewer Mac-centric games, and it's big hitter, Fortnite, isn't available on most Apple devices thanks to the company's ongoing lawsuit with Apple.
I'm sure it'll get there eventually, and Epic definitely worth keeping an eye on for monthly freebies and a bunch of exclusives that you can't get on Steam (though those are rarely Mac compatible), but it's unlikely to serve as the backbone of your gaming world just yet.
If you're more interested in older titles, GOG, or Good Old Games, could be the best port of call. It's a far smaller operation than either Steam or Epic, and is run by the folks over at CD Projekt Red: the developer that brought you The Witcher III and Cyberpunk 2077.
GOG is focused on delivering both new and old games, and tends to be more interested in giving you those games in a DRM-free manner, meaning you can buy the game and own it on your hard drive rather than needing a third-party launcher to access what you've paid for. You can use its launcher, GOG Galaxy, if you prefer though.
Plenty of games that would otherwise have been lost to time have ended up available on GOG, and there are a lot that will work well on any modern Mac.
Finally, there's Xbox's streaming service, Xbox Game Pass, which allows anyone with a subscription to stream available games to whatever device they're using: yes, including your Mac. You can potentially get access to a much wider variety of games using Game Pass than any of the above options, since technically they don't need to run on Mac for you to access them, but it comes with the downside of streaming the games to your laptop, rather than running locally.
This does mean the quality of the gameplay will be partially dependent on whatever internet you're hooked up to, and can lead to lag spikes and dropped connections in the worst-case scenario. However, if you're playing stuff that doesn't require fast reflexes, Game Pass is a very solid and easy option to get running.
Image: Rockstar Games
CrossOver, Wine, and Whisky
Heres the complicated part. Yes, there are plenty of games that aren't compatible with MacOS—but what if I told you that you actually could play them on your Mac with a little bit of tinkering?
Programs like CrossOver, Wine, or Whisky create a compatibility layer that essentially force a third-party storefront to think it's running in Windows. It doesn't always work perfectly, and you might need to do some troubleshooting to get games running well, but you'd be surprised how well you can get even relatively new titles running on modern Macs with a bit of elbow grease.
Getting these programs working is pretty simple, but it can definitely appear complicated at first blush. You need to install the program itself onto your Mac (I've used Whisky, you might prefer a different one), and then use it to install a Windows version of whichever programs you want to run – likely Steam, Epic, GOG Galaxy, or more a specific game executable. You'll have to make sure you've downloaded a Windows-specific version of the program.
Once you have the program you're after installed through that translation program, you have a version of Steam (or whatever program you want to run) on your Mac that thinks it's running in Windows. There's a lot of black magic happening in the background to make this work, but the important part is that it actually does work, and it's completely legal.
Using this method, you can get games that aren't otherwise able to run on a Mac doing so. Games like Red Dead Redemption 2, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remake, or any of the Dark Souls series will run well, though Elden Ring can be a bit hit or miss depending on your expectations.
Now, a M4 Max-equipped Mac Studio isn't going to be delivering resolutions or frame rates equal to incredibly expensive gaming PCs, but you'd be surprised how well many games can play on a system it was never optimised for. Plus, an incredibly expensive gaming PC is probably about 10x the size of a Mac Studio.
If you're interested in knowing a bit more about how best to get stuck into gaming on a Mac, there's a slew of topics over on the r/macgaming subreddit that can help you figure out what works and what doesn't – plus, you can always ask for advice if you get really stuck. God speed!