The Mac Compatibility Quarterly · Vol. 26 · May 2026
Field Guide / Apple Silicon Edition
The State of Running Windows Games on Mac
Whisky is dead. CrossOver 26 is the new default. The free wrapper baton has passed to Sikarugir. A plain-English tour of what works in May 2026, what doesn’t, and which tool to pick for the games you actually want to play.
Researched · Updated 2026-05-03
For three years the answer to “how do I run my Steam library on a Mac?” was the same: download Whisky, click a button, get a Wine bottle, install Steam, mostly enjoy yourself. That answer expired in April 2025 when Isaac Marovitz, Whisky’s sole developer, archived the project and pointed users at CrossOver. macOS 15.4 then broke Steam under Whisky for many users, and because the repo is read-only nothing will be fixed.
The replacement landscape is healthier than that obituary suggests. CrossOver 26 (February 2026) ships Wine 11, Apple’s D3DMetal 3.0, and a list of newly-working titles that includes Helldivers 2, Starfield, God of War Ragnarök, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, and Borderlands 4. On the free side, Sikarugir — the modernised descendant of Wineskin and Kegworks — has settled in as the open-source default. For people who want a one-click Steam wrapper without paying or fiddling, a small project called Merlot does the bare-metal job. And for anything with kernel-level anti-cheat (Valorant, Fortnite, Warzone), no local tool will help; the answer is cloud streaming.
This page collects what we found. Every claim is sourced; the cells where confidence is lower are flagged. The goal is to save you the search.
The amount that Whisky as a whole contributes to Wine is practically zero. Just buy CrossOver.
Isaac Marovitz, Whisky developer, April 2025
The Short Version
If you only read one thing
Three buckets cover almost everyone. Pick the one that matches your wallet and your library.
Pay · recommended
CrossOver 26
Native macOS app, Wine bottles, the broadest game support including a curated list of anti-cheat titles. Most polished UX, most active development, fastest D3DMetal + DXMT integration.
$74/yr · $494 lifetime · 14-day trial
Free · flexible
Sikarugir
Successor to Wineskin/Kegworks. Per-app .app wrappers with GUI toggles for D3DMetal, DXMT, DXVK and vkd3d. No anti-cheat. Steeper than CrossOver but actively maintained.
Shell-script that pulls Wine Staging + DXMT and drops Steam (Merlot).app into /Applications. Apple Silicon only. Closest spiritual replacement for Whisky’s “just install Steam” flow.
Free · github.com/ByMedion/macos-wine-steam
Pick a path
A decision tree
Trace from the top down. The brackets are the games or use cases that pin each branch.
START · what do you want to play?
├─ Kernel anti-cheat (Valorant, COD MW3/Warzone, Fortnite, Apex, R6 Siege, Destiny 2, BF 2042, post-EAC Rocket League)
│ ├─ on Game Pass (Activision titles) → Xbox Cloud Gaming via Safari ($22.99/mo Game Pass Ultimate)
│ ├─ you own it on Steam/Epic AND it’s in NVIDIA’s catalog → GeForce NOW Ultimate ($19.99/mo, 100h cap)
│ └─ Riot title or no streaming option → Cannot run on Mac. Use a real PC.
│
├─ AAA single-player (Helldivers 2, Starfield, GoW Ragnarök, KCD2, Borderlands 4, FF7 Rebirth)
│ ├─ willing to pay, want max FPS → CrossOver 26
│ └─ want to stream (no install, instant access) → GeForce NOW (if title is in catalog)
│
├─ Indie / older / DX9-DX11, no anti-cheat
│ ├─ free + GUI → Sikarugir
│ ├─ free + one-click Steam → Merlot (Apple Silicon only)
│ ├─ library is GOG / Epic / Amazon (NOT Steam) → Heroic Games Launcher
│ └─ already paying for CrossOver → CrossOver
│
├─ Windows productivity (CAD, regulated apps, Outlook)
│ └─ → Parallels Desktop 26 ($99.99/yr or $219.99 perpetual)
│
└─ DX12 AAA, want best FPS, OK paying
└─ → CrossOver 26 (D3DMetal 3.0 + vkd3d 1.18)
Side-by-side
The comparison matrix
Eight tools, eight rows. The cells with caveats are the cells you should read carefully.
Tool
Price (2026)
Steam ease
Anti-cheat
DX12 path
Maintained?
CrossOver 26commercial Wine wrapper, CodeWeavers
$74/yr or $494 lifetime; 14-day trial
✓ install Steam straight into a bottle
Partial — specific user-mode AC titles only
D3DMetal 3.0 + vkd3d 1.18
Active (Feb 2026)
Sikarugirfree; renamed Kegworks/Wineskin
Free
Manual — install Windows Steam yourself
No kernel AC
D3DMetal, DXMT, vkd3d via toggles
Active (Oct 2025 rename)
Whiskydiscontinued, archived
Free
Broken on macOS 15.4+
No
DXVK / GPTK (frozen versions)
Archived May 11 2025
Merlotshell script, Apple Silicon only
Free
✓ one-click .command
No
DXMT only
Solo project, ~23 commits
Heroicmulti-store launcher
Free
No — Steam install removed; manual workaround broken Apr 2026
Catalog-bound — whichever titles publishers opt in
✓ runs on real Windows servers
RTX hardware
Active (cap added Jan 2026)
Xbox Cloud Gamingbrowser; Game Pass library
Game Pass Ultimate $22.99/mo (cut Apr 2026)
No Steam — Game Pass catalog only
✓ server-side
Server-side
Active (1440p Feb 2026)
Tool by tool
The deep dives
What each tool actually is, what it ships with, and what to expect when you install it.
CrossOver 26
paidnative appmost polished
Released February 10, 2026. Bundles Wine 11.0, Apple’s D3DMetal 3.0, DXMT 0.72, vkd3d 1.18, and Wine Mono 10.4.1. Runs on Apple Silicon via Rosetta 2 (still not native ARM as of v26).
Newly working: Helldivers 2, Starfield, God of War Ragnarök, Kingdom Come Deliverance II, FF7 Rebirth, Borderlands 4, Darktide, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Age of Empires IV.
Still blocked: Valorant, Fortnite, COD Warzone, Apex Legends, Destiny 2, BF 2042, R6 Siege, Rocket League online (post-Apr 28 EAC).
Caveat: CodeWeavers’ own support page still says they don’t support anti-cheat. The CrossOver 26 fixes are user-mode AC patches for specific titles, not a general kernel-AC bypass.
Min RAM: 16 GB unified memory; 24–32 GB recommended for Helldivers 2 / Starfield class.
If your library has at least one game on the “newly working” list, CrossOver pays for itself in a single purchase. Trial it free for 14 days.
Sikarugir
freeGUI wrappersWineskin lineage
Renamed from Kegworks in October 2025. The current end of the Wineskin → Kegworks → Sikarugir lineage. Maintained by GitHub user VitorMM. Each Windows app gets its own .app bundle.
Install:brew install --cask Sikarugir-App/sikarugir/sikarugir, then Sikarugir Creator in Applications.
Workflow: create a blank wrapper, point it at SteamSetup.exe, install Steam into the wrapper. Repeat per-app or share wrappers.
Anti-cheat: not supported (this is a Wine ecosystem limitation, not Sikarugir-specific). Don’t expect Helldivers 2 to work here.
The free path that doesn’t feel like a downgrade. Worth the per-game wrapper friction if you don’t want to pay.
Merlot · macos-wine-steam
freeApple Silicon onlyscript
A small ByMedion shell script: downloads Gcenx’s Wine Staging, builds a Steam prefix, pulls 3Shain’s DXMT, registers Steam (Merlot).app in /Applications. First run is slow; subsequent runs launch Steam directly.
Tested on: M1 Max and M2 Pro on macOS Sequoia 15.7.4.
Pinning: Wine and DXMT versions are not pinned — depends on what Gcenx and 3Shain shipped at install time. Reproducibility risk.
Anti-cheat: still no.
Closest thing to “Whisky’s install button” for Steam. Lowest friction free option, but no GUI for tweaks.
Heroic Games Launcher
freeEpic / GOG / Amazonnot for Steam
Common misconception: Heroic does Epic, GOG, and Amazon — not Steam. The Mac “install Steam” button was removed because it kept breaking; the manual workaround is currently flagged broken in the wiki (April 2026).
Latest: v2.21.0 “Loki” on April 22, 2026.
Wine on Mac: uses Wine-Crossover or Wine-Staging builds from Gcenx.
Use it for: running Epic / GOG / Amazon Windows games via Wine, on Apple Silicon. Skip it for Steam.
Genuinely good launcher; just not the answer to the Steam question.
Whisky · archived
discontinuedread-onlydo not use
Last release v2.3.5 on April 5, 2025. Repo archived May 11, 2025. macOS 15.4 broke Steam launches (steamwebhelper hangs); fixes will not come. Marovitz cited burnout and concern that Whisky cannibalised CrossOver sales (and therefore upstream Wine funding).
Last working combo: v2.3.5 on macOS 15.3 or earlier Sequoia, anecdotally.
Workarounds: rolling back Steam to a March 2025 build helps temporarily; Steam will reject outdated clients on its own schedule.
Forks: Bourbon (leonewt0n) was the most-followed fork — archived December 14, 2025, README redirects to Sikarugir. Tequila and Cognac are further-downstream forks of Bourbon; activity unverified.
Pour one out. Migrate to CrossOver, Sikarugir, or Merlot.
Parallels Desktop 26
paidfull Windows 11 ARM VM
The polished VM route. Runs Windows 11 ARM on Apple Silicon, with Microsoft’s Prism layer translating x86 binaries inside the guest. Best for Windows productivity (CAD, regulated apps); bad for AAA gaming because of the double-translation overhead and because kernel anti-cheat refuses VMs.
Pricing: $99.99/yr Standard · $119.99/yr Pro · $219.99 perpetual.
3D limits: partial DX12 in v26; full feature parity rumoured for v27+.
Game compatibility: good for older / 2D / DX9-11 single-player; broken for kernel-AC multiplayer.
Right choice for an Excel macro you can’t avoid. Wrong choice for Helldivers 2.
Apple GPTK 3
developer-onlyCLI / engine
Apple’s Game Porting Toolkit is the engine that powers D3DMetal inside CrossOver and Sikarugir. The EULA restricts it to “developing, testing, or evaluating video games” — there is no consumer install path, and Apple actively discourages user wrapper distribution.
What you actually use: the D3DMetal binaries inside CrossOver or Sikarugir — same engine, legal distribution.
GPTK 3: announced WWDC 2025, GA aligned with macOS Tahoe in late 2025. AVX2 support landed via Rosetta in macOS 15 Sequoia.
If you’re a dev: install via Xcode additional tools and Apple Developer login.
Don’t install GPTK to play games. You already have it through CrossOver or Sikarugir.
Cloud streaming
no installanti-cheat works
The escape hatch when local tools fail. Two services matter on Mac:
GeForce NOW: stream your own Steam/Epic library on NVIDIA RTX servers. Native Apple Silicon app. Ultimate $19.99/mo. New 100-hour monthly cap as of January 1, 2026; overage is sold in 15-hour blocks ($5.99 Ultimate / $2.99 Performance).
Xbox Cloud Gaming: Game Pass library, browser only (Safari works). Game Pass Ultimate cut from $29.99 to $22.99/mo on April 21, 2026; future Call of Duty launches no longer day-one on Game Pass.
For Valorant / Fortnite / Warzone / Apex on Mac, this is the only path that exists.
Under the hood
DirectX-on-Metal: which layer is which
Every Wine-based tool eventually hands DirectX calls to one of these. Knowing them is the difference between a smooth 60fps and a slideshow.
D3DMetal
DirectX 11 + 12 → Metal
Apple’s closed-source layer. Apple Silicon only. Latest is v3.0 in CrossOver 26. Best DX12 path on Mac. Tends to over-synchronise on DX11 because it shares the D3D12 barrier model.
Pick when: playing a DX12 AAA in CrossOver.
DXMT
DirectX 10 + 11 → Metal
3Shain’s open-source layer. Apple Silicon only. Latest upstream is v0.80 (April 2026); CrossOver 26 ships v0.72. Often outperforms D3DMetal on DX11 by using Metal-native synchronisation. Supports MetalFX upscaling and partial DLSS-to-MetalFX translation.
Pick when: any DX11 game on Apple Silicon — try this first.
DXVK
DirectX 9 / 10 / 11 → Vulkan (→ MoltenVK → Metal)
The Linux gold standard (powers Proton). On Mac it runs Vulkan via MoltenVK, which means an extra translation hop. Solid compatibility, occasionally slower than DXMT/D3DMetal because of the hop.
Pick when: D3DMetal/DXMT misbehave on a specific title; or you’re on Intel.
vkd3d-proton
DirectX 12 → Vulkan (→ MoltenVK → Metal)
The DX12 fallback when D3DMetal can’t run a game. CrossOver 26 ships v1.18. Multiple translation hops on Mac mean it’s slower than D3DMetal where both work; counter-examples exist (LotRO).
Pick when: D3DMetal fails on a DX12 title and you can tolerate the FPS hit.
WineD3D
DirectX 1–11 → OpenGL
Wine’s built-in path. Slowest of the bunch, but most compatible for ancient titles. macOS’s OpenGL is frozen at 4.1, which limits its modern-game usefulness.
Pick when: you’re launching something from 2008 and the others won’t boot.
MoltenVK
Vulkan → Metal
Khronos’s Vulkan-on-Metal layer. Not directly user-facing — sits underneath DXVK and vkd3d on Mac. As of January 2026 it ships “nearly conformant” Vulkan 1.4 on Apple Silicon, iOS, and tvOS.
Pick when: n/a — it’s a dependency, not a choice.
The kernel question
Anti-cheat compatibility, game by game
Local tools can’t bypass kernel anti-cheat. Some user-mode anti-cheat is now solved. Cloud streaming runs on real Windows servers and sidesteps both. Here’s where every notable title actually stands.
19 titles
Game
Anti-cheat
CrossOver 26
Free Wine (Sikarugir / Merlot)
Parallels VM
GeForce NOW
Xbox Cloud
“Cloud only” means no local Mac path works; only streaming runs the title. “Cannot run on Mac” means even cloud is blocked because the publisher refuses to opt in to streaming.
Misconceptions
Common pitfalls
Things people get wrong, often after reading older blog posts or marketing copy.
1
“Heroic does Steam.”
It doesn’t. Heroic is for Epic, GOG, and Amazon. The Mac Steam install button was removed because it kept breaking; the manual workaround is currently flagged broken (April 2026). For Steam, use CrossOver, Sikarugir, native Mac Steam, or Merlot.
2
“Whisky still works for Steam.”
Mostly no. macOS 15.4 broke Steam launches under Whisky, and the project is archived. Last release v2.3.5 (April 5, 2025). Anything that broke after April 2025 stays broken.
3
“Bourbon is the official Whisky successor.”
It isn’t. Bourbon was a fork (one of several); the most-followed copy was archived in December 2025 with a redirect to Sikarugir. Don’t recommend Bourbon to anyone in 2026.
4
“GPTK lets users run any Windows game for free.”
Misleading. GPTK is developer-only by EULA and ships as a CLI. End users encounter it indirectly through CrossOver or wrappers like Sikarugir. There’s no consumer install path.
5
“CrossOver 26 broke anti-cheat — Valorant works now.”
It does not. CrossOver 26 patched user-mode anti-cheat checks for a specific list (Helldivers 2, Darktide, etc.). Vanguard, Ricochet, EAC-without-publisher-opt-in, and most kernel anti-cheat all still hard-fail. CodeWeavers’ own support page still says they don’t support anti-cheat.
6
“Run Windows games in Parallels for AAA performance.”
Bad idea. Parallels is good for productivity Windows-on-Mac. For games, you’re stacking emulation on emulation, kernel anti-cheat refuses VMs, and 3D acceleration is capped. CrossOver outperforms it for almost any non-kernel-AC title.
7
“Sikarugir is just renamed Wineskin.”
Right name lineage, wrong implication of staleness. Sikarugir has GUI toggles for D3DMetal/DXMT/DXVK/vkd3d, Homebrew install, active maintenance, and a modernised wrapper architecture. The Wineskin codebase is genuinely a decade old; the surface you interact with is not.
Quick reference
What replaced what
If you used to use…
Use this in 2026
Whisky
CrossOver (paid) or Sikarugir / Merlot (free)
Wineskin / Kegworks
Sikarugir
Bourbon (Whisky fork)
Also dead → Sikarugir
Boot Camp on Apple Silicon
Doesn’t exist; Parallels for full Windows
“Just install GPTK”
CrossOver (uses GPTK-derived components legally)
Steam-via-Heroic on Mac
Native Mac Steam, or CrossOver, or Merlot
Game Porting Toolkit 2
GPTK 3 (since macOS Tahoe / late 2025)
Methodology
How this page was made
This guide was AI-generated from web research conducted on 2026-05-03 and AI fact-checked — not personally hands-on tested. Every quantitative claim (dates, prices, version numbers) was sourced from at least two independent references; cells where confidence is lower (CrossOver Life USD price, GeForce NOW promo pricing, GPTK 3 GA date) are flagged in the underlying research notes. The full structured-claim research with confidence tiers and per-claim source URLs lives in the project repository alongside this page.
Things that move quickly — publisher anti-cheat opt-ins, CrossOver’s “newly working” list, cloud-streaming pricing tiers, DXMT version numbers — have a half-life under six months. Read the date at the top of the page. If you’re reading this in late 2026 and something below contradicts a vendor announcement, trust the vendor.