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I work for a game publisher. We do not suggest developing for Mac. If you're building your game in Unity and can export it in Mac, then great (although now yo

I work for a game publisher. We do not suggest developing for Mac. If you're building your game in Unity and can export it in Mac, then great (although now you have to factor in extra support). Otherwise, don't waste your time. Mac accounts for 3% in Steam [1], and Linux is even worse off. Development time is better spent on internationalization than getting a working Mac build. And I say this being a Mac user myself. Games actually run really well on my MacbookPro. But from a business standpoint, I wouldn't develop for Mac. [1] http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/?platform=combined http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/?platform=combined

CountSessine 9y ago
And I say this being a Mac user myself. Games actually run really well on my MacbookPro. But from a business standpoint, I wouldn't develop for Mac. It also doesn't help that Apple's commitment to video games on the Mac has been inconsistent at best. They insist on developing their own perpetually out-of-date OpenGL front end rather than leaving this to Nvidia and AMD - I don't know how well those two would do as the user-space maintainers of OpenGl on MacOS, but it couldn't be much worse than Apple. Considering this, maybe its a good thing Apple isn't providing a Vulkan front-end?
ryandrake 9y ago
Aren't the major game engines already cross-platform? I'm definitely an outsider to the industry, but it almost seems like a game developer would have to go out of their way to NOT support Mac and Linux these days. Why would one take a cross platform game engine and make the rest of the game logic Windows-only?
- majewsky 9y ago
  It's not a given, even if Unity is used. For example, I've played 140 on Linux (via Steam) and loved it, so I was quite excited when the same (indie) developer had a new game, but it's only available for Windows at the moment (and Mac maybe? don't remember). I guess that, even with an engine like Unity taking care of the cross-platform support, you at least want to run a few tests on the actual target platform (instead of just dumping a compiled binary on Steam without any testing). And that costs time, and therefore money, esp. if issues are found and need to be addressed.
- ashark 9y ago
  Of my ~500 Steam games, IIRC something like 300 have macOS builds, and about 200 for Linux. My experience is that most small studio or "indie" games will run on all three platforms, about half of really big games have Mac releases and some much smaller portion also support Linux, and of course anything that runs under Dosbox works on all three. ~90% of the Linux games are indie or dosbox. MacOS is a much more viable platform for a gamer, also aided by being generally much less fussy/buggy for all things multimedia-dependent like games, though hindered by generally mediocre graphics cards. However you might be surprised what runs acceptably on a 2014-vintage Intel Iris graphics chip. I was.
- thehardsphere 9y ago
  Because supporting Mac still requires effort on the part of the game developer. Like, you still need a Mac to test against and QA people to do the testing. The market can still be too small to justify that expense, even if the engine support is good.
ouid 9y ago
mac accounting for 3% on steam isn't the indicator you seem to believe it is.
- Someone1234 9y ago
  It makes the point that they were trying to make. If you compare 3% of Mac users, to 16% whose primary language is Simplified Chinese, 13% whose primary language is Russian, and so on, there might be better areas to expand your game into than onto the Mac. When you're a commercial entity with finite resources, you have to evaluate what is likely to net a greater rate of return, a niche OS, or a much less niche language. With unlimited resources you can do both, but few companies can allocate money things that won't pay for themselves.
  - ouid 9y ago
    3% does not represent the potential market share among OSX users for your game.
    - Someone1234 9y ago
      Absolutely. That's best case scenario.
      - ouid 9y ago
        No it isn't.
lobster_johnson 9y ago
The economics may make sense, but it's also a self-fulfilling prophecy: People don't play Steam games on Macs because there are hardly any games! There's a reason lots of people dual-boot into Bootcamp. I would love to play more games on my Mac, as opposed to under Windows or on my console, but the selection is terrible. Even when the engine the developers have used compiles for Mac, developers often don't do a port. That extends to indie games, too; still no Downwell for Mac, for example, despite the fact that it was made with GameMaker, which supports macOS as a target. Wadjet Eye, which produces a lot of technologically basic point and click adventure games, are very inconsistent about their releases; some games are releases on macOS, but most aren't. Mac is also treated as a black sheep by the Steam app, to the extent that it's its own distinct item [1] in the genre list, next to "Action", "Adventure" and so on, and if you're a Mac Steam will still happily bury you in Windows games, despite the fact that they aren't playable. Apple may be blamed on the AAA game situation, but for everything else (and most games aren't AAA), it's squarely on publishers, developers, and Steam. [1] http://i.imgur.com/lE4NZsj.png http://i.imgur.com/lE4NZsj.png
- emsy 9y ago
  >(and most games aren't AAA) You're right, but AAA sells make up the biggest fraction of game sales. Why should I buy a Mac for gaming if I can't play games like Call of Duty, Overwatch, GTA V or The Witcher 3? AA and Indie games are a niche market, not driving factors. There is also a factor that you can't really blame on anyone: OS market share. Even if more Mac (and Linux) users would buy games, the time worked on porting and support would likely still result in a net loss.
  - vbezhenar 9y ago
    Porting shouldn't be too hard, if you're using good engine. Support for users is proportional to number of users. Very limited choice of hardware and generally up-to-date software should tremendously help with support as well. It might be a net loss for very niche games, but for a few thousand sales it shouldn't be that bad IMO. Also the fact that there are not that many games on macOS helps as well. I wouldn't buy Civilization, but I bought it, because there was a moment I wanted to play something and Civilization was one of the few recognizable titles I've found in AppStore.
pentae 9y ago
In my opinion the reason the Mac marketshare is so small is because up until recently, you simply can not buy a mac with a graphics card capable of running any decent game.
jogjayr 9y ago
> Mac accounts for 3% in Steam Wow I really should consider myself fortunate that all the games I like are on Mac. I'd hate to have to get a separate gaming PC.
- adiabatty 9y ago
  You'd just have to set up a Boot Camp partition like I did.
arwineap 9y ago
Linux is ramping up! I won't play a game unless it'll somehow run on linux. I guess this means I've been playing a lot of unity / wine games :)

CountSessine 9y ago

And I say this being a Mac user myself. Games actually run really well on my MacbookPro. But from a business standpoint, I wouldn't develop for Mac. It also doesn't help that Apple's commitment to video games on the Mac has been inconsistent at best. They insist on developing their own perpetually out-of-date OpenGL front end rather than leaving this to Nvidia and AMD - I don't know how well those two would do as the user-space maintainers of OpenGl on MacOS, but it couldn't be much worse than Apple. Considering this, maybe its a good thing Apple isn't providing a Vulkan front-end?

ryandrake 9y ago

Aren't the major game engines already cross-platform? I'm definitely an outsider to the industry, but it almost seems like a game developer would have to go out of their way to NOT support Mac and Linux these days. Why would one take a cross platform game engine and make the rest of the game logic Windows-only?

majewsky 9y ago
It's not a given, even if Unity is used. For example, I've played 140 on Linux (via Steam) and loved it, so I was quite excited when the same (indie) developer had a new game, but it's only available for Windows at the moment (and Mac maybe? don't remember). I guess that, even with an engine like Unity taking care of the cross-platform support, you at least want to run a few tests on the actual target platform (instead of just dumping a compiled binary on Steam without any testing). And that costs time, and therefore money, esp. if issues are found and need to be addressed.
ashark 9y ago
Of my ~500 Steam games, IIRC something like 300 have macOS builds, and about 200 for Linux. My experience is that most small studio or "indie" games will run on all three platforms, about half of really big games have Mac releases and some much smaller portion also support Linux, and of course anything that runs under Dosbox works on all three. ~90% of the Linux games are indie or dosbox. MacOS is a much more viable platform for a gamer, also aided by being generally much less fussy/buggy for all things multimedia-dependent like games, though hindered by generally mediocre graphics cards. However you might be surprised what runs acceptably on a 2014-vintage Intel Iris graphics chip. I was.
thehardsphere 9y ago
Because supporting Mac still requires effort on the part of the game developer. Like, you still need a Mac to test against and QA people to do the testing. The market can still be too small to justify that expense, even if the engine support is good.

ouid 9y ago

mac accounting for 3% on steam isn't the indicator you seem to believe it is.

Someone1234 9y ago
It makes the point that they were trying to make. If you compare 3% of Mac users, to 16% whose primary language is Simplified Chinese, 13% whose primary language is Russian, and so on, there might be better areas to expand your game into than onto the Mac. When you're a commercial entity with finite resources, you have to evaluate what is likely to net a greater rate of return, a niche OS, or a much less niche language. With unlimited resources you can do both, but few companies can allocate money things that won't pay for themselves.
- ouid 9y ago
  3% does not represent the potential market share among OSX users for your game.
  - Someone1234 9y ago
    Absolutely. That's best case scenario.
    - ouid 9y ago
      No it isn't.

lobster_johnson 9y ago

The economics may make sense, but it's also a self-fulfilling prophecy: People don't play Steam games on Macs because there are hardly any games! There's a reason lots of people dual-boot into Bootcamp. I would love to play more games on my Mac, as opposed to under Windows or on my console, but the selection is terrible. Even when the engine the developers have used compiles for Mac, developers often don't do a port. That extends to indie games, too; still no Downwell for Mac, for example, despite the fact that it was made with GameMaker, which supports macOS as a target. Wadjet Eye, which produces a lot of technologically basic point and click adventure games, are very inconsistent about their releases; some games are releases on macOS, but most aren't. Mac is also treated as a black sheep by the Steam app, to the extent that it's its own distinct item [1] in the genre list, next to "Action", "Adventure" and so on, and if you're a Mac Steam will still happily bury you in Windows games, despite the fact that they aren't playable. Apple may be blamed on the AAA game situation, but for everything else (and most games aren't AAA), it's squarely on publishers, developers, and Steam. [1] http://i.imgur.com/lE4NZsj.png http://i.imgur.com/lE4NZsj.png

emsy 9y ago
>(and most games aren't AAA) You're right, but AAA sells make up the biggest fraction of game sales. Why should I buy a Mac for gaming if I can't play games like Call of Duty, Overwatch, GTA V or The Witcher 3? AA and Indie games are a niche market, not driving factors. There is also a factor that you can't really blame on anyone: OS market share. Even if more Mac (and Linux) users would buy games, the time worked on porting and support would likely still result in a net loss.
- vbezhenar 9y ago
  Porting shouldn't be too hard, if you're using good engine. Support for users is proportional to number of users. Very limited choice of hardware and generally up-to-date software should tremendously help with support as well. It might be a net loss for very niche games, but for a few thousand sales it shouldn't be that bad IMO. Also the fact that there are not that many games on macOS helps as well. I wouldn't buy Civilization, but I bought it, because there was a moment I wanted to play something and Civilization was one of the few recognizable titles I've found in AppStore.

pentae 9y ago

In my opinion the reason the Mac marketshare is so small is because up until recently, you simply can not buy a mac with a graphics card capable of running any decent game.

jogjayr 9y ago

> Mac accounts for 3% in Steam Wow I really should consider myself fortunate that all the games I like are on Mac. I'd hate to have to get a separate gaming PC.

adiabatty 9y ago
You'd just have to set up a Boot Camp partition like I did.

arwineap 9y ago

Linux is ramping up! I won't play a game unless it'll somehow run on linux. I guess this means I've been playing a lot of unity / wine games :)