+1

I agree with this. The fact that there is a case-insensitive filesystem on a mac is only for transitory purposes. At some point that will be abandoned, so also from a contingency perspective it doesn't make much sense to only support a 'temporary' filesystem.

HobbinHood hits the nail on the head: seeing that there is a Linux client these days, that means that case sensitive filesystems are not really an issue.

Many mac users need a case sensitive filesystem for other software.

Also, there are workarounds that used to work, but somehow Steam made this impossible forcing the installation to install everything in ~/Library/Application Support/Steam, which one cannot circumvent anymore. Effectively that means it is impossible to use steam on a case sensitive filesystem.

Thanks for the support on the matter.

Originally posted by marc.baas:

[...]
Also, there are workarounds that used to work, but somehow Steam made this impossible forcing the installation to install everything in ~/Library/Application Support/Steam, which one cannot circumvent anymore. Effectively that means it is impossible to use steam on a case sensitive filesystem.

Hmm, this still works for me. What exactly happens?

Well, for some reason some of the instructions I had found at http://www.mydigitallife.info/workaround-to-run-steam-on-mac-with-no-case-insensitive-file-system/ were not working for me.

Now I have been in development for over 12 years now, so I managed to fix it myself. But for the average user, this can be quite challenging.

Actually, that is the reason for my response to your post. I think that an average gamer should not have to go through these ordeals, but just install Steam, and his games, and play. It shouldn't be too hard to do, not even from a developer's perspective.

Originally posted by marc.baas:

[...]Actually, that is the reason for my response to your post. I think that an average gamer should not have to go through these ordeals, but just install Steam, and his games, and play. It shouldn't be too hard to do, not even from a developer's perspective.

Exactly!

Bump. Us dev-type unix professionals tend to require case sensitive file systems, but wouldn't mind playing the occasional game on Steam either. The workaround is doable, but it's a major turn-off, especially since a steam update can break it again.

Please consider fixing the issue, given that you have solved this for Linux.

For anyone else frustrated with the issue:
In addition to the case insensitive disk image / symlink solutions out there (which more or less do get Steam running, but throw the SteamGuard reverification at you every single time), I had to mkdir .../Steam.app/Contents/MacOS/config. A bit of fs_usage tracing showed that steam wasn't able to access this directory; creating it probably failed during the installation process, thanks to more case issues.

The official reasoning is that some games sold on steam for mac actually do require case-insensitive filesystem in order to work correctly.

This is really annoying. I'm having the same problem with League of Legends.

There is no reason I can think of that would justify this issue; not even with some of the games sold on steam.

Originally posted by ebudan:

Bump. Us dev-type unix professionals tend to require case sensitive file systems, but wouldn't mind playing the occasional game on Steam either. The workaround is doable, but it's a major turn-off, especially since a steam update can break it again.

Please consider fixing the issue, given that you have solved this for Linux.

For anyone else frustrated with the issue:
In addition to the case insensitive disk image / symlink solutions out there (which more or less do get Steam running, but throw the SteamGuard reverification at you every single time), I had to mkdir .../Steam.app/Contents/MacOS/config. A bit of fs_usage tracing showed that steam wasn't able to access this directory; creating it probably failed during the installation process, thanks to more case issues.

My old nemesis, Dr. Necro

Yeah, this is ABSOLUTELY ridiculous! I require a case sensitive file system, and want to set up a fusion drive. That is ALREADY going to be a chore and a half! The whole POINT of setting up a fusion drive is to get my OS and frequently used data (including Stream) running off the SSD portion.

The PROBLEM, is that a fusion drive will only support one extra partition, and it places that partition EXCLUSIVELY on the mechanical hard drive, and does not utilize the SSD at all!

That makes my SSD purchase USELESS for Steam!

This literally means that I CAN NOT USE STEAM ON MY SSD, because I MUST use a case sensitive file system for other tasks and apps that I run... The ONLY way to run Steam off of an SSD for me would be for me to fork out for a SECOND SSD...

This is ABSURD!!!

And you bet I'm gonna necro the heck outta this post! I'm SICK of Steam's garbage right now!

+1

Like many other people I also use Steam on my Linux system which is Debian 8 and have no problem running it on the ext4 filesytem which is definitely CASE-SENSITIVE.

The first thing I've done with my iMac is to reinstall yosemite on a CASE-SENSITIVE filesystem because I simply can't conceive that a UNIX(-like) OS won't be able to make any difference between "top" and "TOP"...

Hopefully, I followed this very nice guide :
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1268621

and it's working now, but the way to make Steam working on a Mac with a CASE-SENSITIVE filesystem is just UGLY.

Hope that someone is listening to us at the Steam team but I don't think so because since 05-14-2010 when the guide was written nothing has changed about the CASE-SENSITIVE issue.

My apologies about my bad English.

Yeah, the way to make it work is indeed ugly... I ended up saving the cash to shell out for a 1 TB SSD for my boot drive. I guess I'm taking the 240 GB SSD I had gotten before, and will dedicate that to steam, so it can sit on a case insensitive file system... Stupid that I'd need to resort to this...

+1 from me as well. This is ridiculous.

Currently on Sierra OS X I don't get this error but the application fails to start properly. If I reinstall OS X on top of a case insensitive filesystem the application starts as expected.

An update just "improved detection of case-sensitive file systems" last night, and broke many workarounds. So... Bump.

+1

Greetings from year 2025 (12 years after initial report) Steam Client still does not run on macOS with case-sensitive filesystem and this is a totally ignored BLOCKER BUG lol :D :D :D