No sound in Mac games? Check for leftover audio drivers

I originally posted this elsewhere some time ago. The problem is long solved, but I'm putting it here too, as a note for my future self and for anyone who lands here from a search.

The problem

At some point, a few games on my Apple silicon Mac mini stopped playing any sound at all. Other games were completely fine. The ones I noticed it in were Cities: Skylines, StarCraft II and Heroes of the Storm.

The fix

A quick disclaimer first: this is what worked on my machine, so do it at your own risk.

The cause was an extra audio driver that Microsoft Teams installs as a plug-in. I deleted its folder, restarted the Mac, and the sound came back:

/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/MSTeamsAudioDevice.driver

While looking into it, I found other people with silent games who fixed them the same way, by removing extra audio drivers. Some of those reports were about the audio driver that Zoom installs, so it's not only a Teams thing. If you have similar symptoms, /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/ is a good place to look.

One more thing: removing the driver didn't break Teams. It kept working normally for me, so I'm honestly not sure what the driver is for. It's an optional component in the Teams installer, so you can also just leave it unchecked when you install.