In brief: In recent years, accessibility features designed to assist gamers with disabilities have become increasingly common, and Steam has now taken a significant step toward supporting them. Valve has also introduced an update that allows Mac users to run the client natively on Apple Silicon devices. This comes as the number of Steam games supporting Apple's homegrown Arm processors continues to grow steadily.
Users browsing Steam can now filter games in the store based on numerous accessibility features. The change will allow customers with disabilities to more easily find titles that they can play comfortably.
The new filters include features that have become commonplace in modern games, such as customizable text size, colorblind modes, descriptive audio, and text-to-speech (and vice versa). Users can also filter games based on whether they are playable with only the keyboard, only the mouse, or include mandatory timed button presses. Valve also added filters for stereo sound, surround sound, adjustable difficulty, and the ability to save progress at any time.
Furthermore, games that include accessibility features now list them in a drop-down menu on the right-hand side of the store page below the controller support section. Valve said that accessibility information is viewable on over 5,000 store pages.
Meanwhile, the June 12 Steam Client Beta update added native Apple Silicon support for the client and Steam Helper apps. Like many other legacy applications, Steam typically runs on Apple Silicon Macs through the Rosetta translation layer, which adds performance overhead.
When Apple announced macOS 26 Tahoe at WWDC last week, the company confirmed plans to sunset Rosetta in the coming years, accelerating macOS's full transition away from x86 and toward the Arm instruction set. Although some gaming apps will retain limited Rosetta compatibility, and Intel-based Macs will receive security updates for a few more years, macOS 27 will be the final release to support x86.
Most PC games still prioritize Windows and x86, but native Apple Silicon support is becoming more common in games on Steam and the Mac App Store.
Major examples include Assassin's Creed Shadows, Farming Simulator 25, Baldur's Gate 3, Prodeus, and No Man's Sky. An Apple Silicon version of Cyberpunk 2077 is also in development, and popular benchmark tool 3DMark recently introduced support through Steam.
The new Apple Silicon version of Steam is the client's first Arm-native implementation. Recent rumors suggest that Valve is developing an Arm version of SteamOS, which might run on a standalone VR headset. Codenamed Deckard, the device will support SteamVR games and any Steam Deck-compatible game in theater mode. The introduction of Apple Silicon support also raises the question of when or if Valve plans to update Steam for Windows on Arm to improve performance on Qualcomm Snapdragon X devices.
Steam adds Apple Silicon support and new accessibility filters
