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Apple 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 Me
by salil999 3y ago
Apple 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.