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Not enough games on mac > So nobody buys macs to games > So no players on Mac > So games not made for mac Sad little loop :(
by gehwartzen 3y ago
Not enough games on mac > So nobody buys macs to games > So no players on Mac > So games not made for mac
Sad little loop :(
- salil999 3y agoApple wasn't also the most helpful when it came to motivating developers to port their games over. 30% fee for apps and no native development until 2014 with Metal. Windows had DirectX for a much longer time.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago> 30% fee for apps You can just skip the app store, can't you?
- wahnfrieden 3y agonever mind
- KennyBlanken 3y agoYou're confusing code signing (which only requires a developer account) with store publishing. I don't have a single store-installed app on my mac and I only get warnings (once) from 1-2 open source apps whose developers don't code-sign.
- qwytw 3y agoSteam games don't have scary dialogs. Neither do apps distributed directly by third parties as long as they are signed etc. (you just need the $100/300 per year apple dev. account for that).
- easeout 3y agoYes, especially if you're Valve and you operate the preeminent game store.
- badwolf 3y agowhich also charges similarly.
- Angostura 3y agoYup - I just bought Baldurs Gate 3 for Mac on GoG
- beeboobaa 3y agoBesides the fact that apple demands far too much money from developers to "access their platform" they have also failed to deliver cross platform tooling so you need some fiddly Mac machines to be able to even build for their platform. Then there's the fact they broke backwards compatibility by using their own obscure processors so that makes developing for them a non-starter for many shops. Sadly this is a problem of Apple's own making.
- giantrobot 3y agoThose damn obscure ARM processors. Nobody uses those!
- mminer237 3y agoI don't believe Valve currently targets any ARM systems with any of its games.
- giantrobot 3y agoThat's not the same as saying ARM processors are obscure. You've probably got at least a dozen of them in your house right now if not several on your person.
- coldpie 3y agoThis entire conversation is taking place in the context of desktop/laptop PC gaming, where ARM is definitely obscure.
- goosedragons 3y agoPortal 1 and 2 are on the Switch. They had a HL2 port to the Nvidia Shield too IIRC.
- jamesfinlayson 3y agoDid they do the Portal ports? I thought the nVidia Shield ports were done externally.
- hmry 3y agoAlso deprecating OpenGL and never supporting Vulkan doesn't send a "we want game developers" message.
- pjmlp 3y agoPlaystation is doing pretty well with proprietary APIs.
- papichulo2023 3y agoWow, TIL. Now I am wondering why they dont just move to vulkan, even the switch does.
- Shekelphile 3y agoYou can use normal APIs on consoles through translation layers (it works the same on the switch). The translation layers aren't the best so everyone just ends up using the proprietary 'API' in the end, which translates/gets inlined down to raw commands written to the GPU's command buffer at compile time.
- pjmlp 3y agoSwitch also has a proprietary API called NVN, Vulkan is more like a 2nd level API. Any game dev that wants the full hardware capabilities reaches out to NVN.
- dontlaugh 3y agoAlmost no game on the Switch used Vulkan, except for a few PC ports.
- dagmx 3y agoVulkan is probably the least used API across any games. Most switch games don’t use it either. Honestly, this is the biggest division between gamers who obsess over API and people who develop gamers. API divergence is really not that big of a deal as long as you can do similar things.
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- foobarian 3y agoWasn't Jobs famously opposed to video games? Current state of things is not really surprising at all in that light.
- plussed_reader 3y agoI believe it was the shovelware that plagued the Atari's and other contemporary setups that was the distaste overall. That ET(1982) game is indicative of the money-grabs that were trying to be avoided.
- KennyBlanken 3y ago> 30% fee for apps Which is exactly the same cut every other publisher takes. Valve, Origin, GOG, etc are all 30%.
- jhasse 3y agoOnly Apple charges an additional $100 per year though. I know that's nothing for big studios, but it scares very small indie devs away.
- sleepybrett 3y agoa hundred dollars. A year, thats 0.27 cents a day. The boomers tell me that's just 5 avacado toasts a year.
- Jensson 3y agoIts quite a lot to pay just to make a gamejam game available though, and that is where indie developers starts out. If you can't publish your toys without paying 100 dollars then it is a huge issue for onboarding new developers who just want to test what it is like.
- prewett 3y agoThe $100/yr is to publish to the App Store, which I don't think is the place for a gamejam game. You can download Xcode for free and distribute the resulting binaries for free.
- Timon3 3y agoYou are technically correct, except that you have to jump through hoops to run an unsigned application (https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/open-a-mac-app-from-an-unidentified-developer-mh40616/mac https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/open-a-mac-app-from...), which for the normal user is tantamount to not being able to run the game.
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- latexr 3y ago> 30% fee for apps That’s only if you publish through the App Store. A developer who publishes on their own website doesn’t pay any percentage fee, though they do pay 100$ a year for the developer account which allows to sign and notarise the app. A developer who publishes on Steam pays 30% to Valve.
- jayd16 3y agoSteam seems to be a far healthier ecosystem than the app store, though. You might actually be able to break through on steam whereas the Apple app store has a very ossified list of top games.
- madeofpalk 3y agoThe point being that Apple does not take a 30% cut of games on Mac, so it's hard to levy that as a criticism.
- latexr 3y ago> Steam seems to be a far healthier ecosystem than the app store, though. Not the point. Also, it’s not surprising that one of the biggest gaming platforms, catering exclusively to games, is doing better in games than a more general platform; it would be strange if it were the other way around. Also also, no one is defending the state of gaming on macOS, we’re all aware it’s bad.
- babypuncher 3y agodevelopers pay that same 30% fee to Steam on PC. But it's a moot point because you do not have to sell Mac apps on the App Store.
- robertoandred 3y agoNo native development? Macs had OpenGL since the 90s before Metal came out.
- kevingadd 3y agoAncient, poorly-supported, low-performance OpenGL, yeah. Game devs loved it and that's why there were so many mac ports.
- fullstop 3y agoI wonder if the Steam Deck has pushed Linux above Mac in terms of Steam userbase? I tried, unsuccessfully, to find stats on the matter. Edit: As Sayrus points out below you can click on the rows in the Steam Hardware Survey to show more information.
- kaffeeringe 3y agoYes: https://www.heise.de/news/Steam-Umfrage-Linux-ueberholt-MacOS-bei-Gamern-9234559.html https://www.heise.de/news/Steam-Umfrage-Linux-ueberholt-MacO...
- bakugo 3y agohttps://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ The answer is yes. Mac is currently at 1.43% while Linux is at 1.63% (43% of which is Steam Deck)
- Bishop_ 3y agoValve actually collects really good stats on stuff like this https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw... Looks like linux barely beats out macos
- Sayrus 3y agoSteam publishes stats on this[1]. You can expand "OS Version" to see the repartitions between MacOS, Linux and Windows and their respective versions. [1] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...
- fullstop 3y agoI was there, but didn't know that I could click on OS Version. Thanks! I also wonder if Linux or Mac OS users are more or less likely to answer the surveys. Unless they've changed how it works, it is a pop up asking if you want to be recorded.
- Avamander 3y agoAll Apple's fault with forcing Metal on people.
- ncr100 3y ago/s they should just use directX
- ubertaco 3y agoDirectX was also crappy vendor lock-in, but let's not pretend that the similarities go beyond that. DirectX was vendor lock-in _from the vendor that owned 80-to-90-percent of the market_. Yeah, it sucked to be tied to their platform, but at least you were tied to the platform that nearly your entire target audience was already using. Metal is vendor lock-in from a vendor that owns like, what, _maybe_ 10% of the market if we're being generous? And that 10% of the market is a group that largely is already disinclined to care about video games, so you're already unlikely to capture a noticeable portion of that already-small minority market segment. It's a dumb move, really. Compare that with how Linux has started getting support for games: WINE and Proton are compatibility layers so that you as a developer can still target that 80-to-90-percent of the market and your game will (probably) work on the 1% that run Linux too without you needing to do extra work -- and Vulkan (and OpenGL before it) are ways of targeting _everything_...except of course Apple, but that's only because they tend to take an IE6 approach to implementing standards (that is: either everyone accepts our crap as a de-facto standard, or else we don't implement any standards).
- nani8ot 3y agoXbox and PlayStation exclusively use their own API's. The only console supporting Vulkan is the Switch.
- jwells89 3y ago10% of the desktop market maybe, for mobile games Metal usage is much much higher. Practically every 3D game on iOS is using it now. This is also probably why Apple is holding out. They see their phone/tablet iGPUs getting powerful enough to be in a league similar to those in their laptops and believe that mobile and desktop gaming will eventually converge. Game publishers might not care about the tiny share of Mac gamers, but will they also feel that way about the far more numerous iOS gamers? There’s been hints of this happening with some games straddling the line between desktop and mobile like Genshin Impact which is often compared to Breath of the Wild and now the upcoming RE4 remaster will run on iOS in addition to the other major gaming platforms.
- shepherdjerred 3y agomacOS actually has a _ton_ of games that work very well on the new Apple Silicon chips. I've played: * Lots of Paradox games (Stellaris, E4, Hearts of Iron, Victoria) * Civilization 5/6 * Factorio * League of Legends There are a ton of games that don't work on macOS, but it's incorrect to say that you can't play on macOS.
- therealdrag0 3y agoI’ve been binging Rimworld :)
- shepherdjerred 3y agoRimworld is a great game, although I do get frustrated with how bad the AI is at various tasks like efficiently scheduling workers. I'm hoping a new expansion comes out soon!
- therealdrag0 3y agoTotally. One of the mods I have helps a little bit, but I was surprised how little it helps. Mostly just like allowing workers to help each other haul/construct. On the one hand I wish it was better. OTOH in the back of my mind I wonder if part of the magic is forcing you to get into the nitty gritty and do you best to manually optimize and if you don't you accept the chaos and inefficiency--nearly a metaphor for life.
- franczesko 3y ago30% of extra cut for Apple? No, thanks.
- baby 3y agoI think there's some fundamental issues with gaming on Mac also. I've tried gaming on mac for a very long time, and games were always sluggish and fullscreen seldom worked correctly.
- asdff 3y agoEven if you did game on a mac in the intel days, you would get massive performance improvements dual booting into a windows partition, so that's what most people who were serious about it would do and that certainly doesn't help the numbers.
- seec 3y agoYep, they don't care as long as they make billions. It's really horrible how macOS in general has become so lackluster when it comes to performance. When your competitors can extract more performance on the same hardware (that you designed !) it really shows there is something wrong. But I guess they fixed it with the Apple Silicon switch : no direct comparison possible so they can pretend to be as competitive as they want. I believe the AS switch was in part to avoid competing and the prices increases validate that...