Valve is using MoltenVK to bring Artifact to MacOS using Vulkan

If you talk about MacOS to most PC builders, the single word description that will most often be used for the platform is “restricted”, whether it be in regards to hardware upgrades, device selection or software availability. 

In the world of PC gaming, one of the greatest innovations in recent years has been the development of low-level APIs like Vulkan and DirectX 12, which have achieved great results in games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Strange Brigade, DOOM (2016) and Gears of War 4. Instead of adopting the Vulkan API, Apple has decided to go it alone, developing Metal, a new API for both iOS and MacOS, delivering the same low-level features as Vulkan, but within an Apple-controlled environment. 

With Apple failing to support a low-level API that’s also available on Windows, the process of porting games to MacOS has gotten a lot more difficult, but Valve alongside LunarG and Brenwill Workshop worked to change that, creating MoltenVK, the toolset responsible for bringing Artifact to MacOS. 

The idea behind MoltenVK is simple, translate Vulkan calls into Metal calls to facilitate Vulkan compatibility on the platform, regardless of whether or not Apple wants to support it or not. With Khronis’ backing, MoltenVK is now an official translation layer between Vulkan and Metal, allowing MacOS users to achieve the benefits of a low-level API, without the effort required to develop bespoke Metal versions of Vulkan applications.  

Through MoltenVK, Valve’s Artifact card game is available on Windows, Linux and MacOS using the Vulkan API. Valve has already released a Vulkan-based version of DOTA 2 on MacOS using MoltenVK.