How to play 'PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds' — the most popular game of 2017 — on a Mac

pubg geforce now m ac

"PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" ("PUBG") is the most popular game of 2017 by a mile, despite the fact it can only be played on PCs running Windows 10, and that it's not even a fully finished game.

That's right, "PUBG" is still in beta at the time of writing, and it became the most-played game on the Steam gaming platform, beating "Dota 2" for most concurrent gamers playing on Steam for the first time in years.

"PUBG" is soon coming to Xbox One on December 30, leaving PlayStation 4 users in the cold, at least for now. And because "PUBG" is only available on PC, Mac owners are also out of luck... until now.

My colleague Dave Smith recently tried an app called GeForce Now from Nvidia to play "Destiny 2" on a Mac, and he had overly positive remarks about his experience. And it turns out that one of the games you can play on GeForce Now is "PUBG." The rest is history.

Here's how you can play "PUBG" on a Mac, and what it's like:

Haven't heard of "PUBG?" Here's what it's all about.

If you haven't heard of "PUBG," the most popular game of 2017, it's a battle royale-style game where you and 100 other online players try to survive to become the last person standing. You need to pick up weapons and gear and fight against other players, but there's also a virtual barrier than slowly encouraches on you and the map you're playing in, restricting the playable area until the game concludes. You can choose to be active and shoot your way through the game, or be stealthy and keep the shooting for the very last minute when only a few players are left.

"PUBG" is currently only available to play on PC, and players interested in playing "PUBG" need a PC that's powerful enough to run the game smoothly. It's not a particularly lightweight game.

This is where Nvidia's GeForce Now comes into play. It'll let you play "PUBG" on your Mac if you don't have a PC that's powerful enough to play "PUBG," or an Xbox for when the game is released.

All you have to do is install the GeForce Now app on your Mac, and sign in to your Steam account – or create a Steam account if you don't have one.

You can find the link to download GeForce Now beta on your Mac here. It's free for now, and creating a Steam account is also free. You'll just have to buy "PUBG," which costs $30.

The GeForce Now app is basically like owning a high-performance gaming PC without actually owning one.

The way GeForce Now works is that you connect to an Nvidia gaming PC somewhere in "the cloud" – most often a specialized warehouse full of web servers and computers – from your own computer. This gaming PC in the cloud runs the game itself, and the visuals for the game are streamed over the internet to your computer screen at home (or at work!), much like a YouTube of Netflix video.

That means you can run available games at their highest graphical settings because your own computer isn't doing any of the work towards running the game. All your computer is doing is streaming the video and relaying your keyboard strokes and mouse movements to the Nvidia gaming PC in the cloud. It'll even work if you have an old, underpowered computer, just as long as it can reliably stream video over the internet.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider