Counter Strike fans are excited by Valve’s announcement that a new improved free Counter Strike 2 that replaces CSGO is currently available as a Limited Test version but Mac users are out of luck.
The new Counter Strike 2 is an invitation only Limited Test version but is Windows only with no Mac version or even console version available at the moment.
The full release of Counter Strike 2 is planned for summer 2023 but there are no signs of a Counter Strike 2 port for Mac as yet.
Those who receive an invite to the Limited Test version are selected on factors such as recent playtime on Valve servers, Steam account standing and trust factor according to the Valve team.
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Can You Play Counter Strike 2 On Mac?
Although there are many ways of playing Windows only games on a Mac, none of them work for the new Counter Strike 2 game.
Even if you could get Counter Strike working by installing Windows on your Mac with Parallels, the Valve anti-cheat software would prevent it running on a Mac.
An if you got it working via another method such as CrossOver, the Counter Strike 2 would be virtually unplayable due to lag and poor graphics handling.
There aren’t any Cloud gaming platforms that have access to the Counter Strike 2 test version either so that rules them out too.
There are however Cloud computing services such as airGPU and Shadow that allow you to install games on a Windows PC in the Cloud and then play the game remotely on a Mac.
This could work for Counter Strike 2 but the cost of such services, latency and maximum frame rate of 60 frames per second make it unrealistic for most.
The only realistic method that may work to play Counter Strike 2 on a Mac is to install Windows using Boot Camp but this would only work on Intel Macs and is not guaranteed to work anyway.
It’s also unlikely that Valve’s Source 2 engine that Counter Strike 2 is based on would work well in Boot Camp either.
So for now unfortunately, Mac users are out of luck if they want to play the new Counter Strike 2 Limited Test.
You can find out more about the Counter Strike 2 release in the Steam FAQ.
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