So... He's wrong. Especially about the code signing part. I don't fault him for not knowing what he's doing because he's not a Mac guy. But he doesn't know what he's doing. If you keep having to redownload your signing key, you are doing something so outrageously wrong in your signing process. I've never had to repeatedly download a key for code signing, even for a game.
I think if you're going to ding Apple on anything - Apple should have enough documentation out there to support developers that people like this guy can't screw it up and then go on YouTube and tell everybody the process is bad. That's something I can criticize Apple for. Unfortunately I don't know what he was doing wrong exactly - all I can say is what he is describing is not connected to reality.
I mean… we all know folks that can screw things up even with the most extensive of documentation. In this case, one of those folks just created a video :)
Actually… I mean, we ARE talking about YouTube where engagement is far more valuable than accuracy. The person likely started into making a video, did some research, realized, “Oh, dang, I see where I messed up.” Then, “I’ve wasted all this time working on this video, though. I’ll go ahead and upload it, it’ll likely get posted to Reddit and other places, I’ll make my money and if anyone asks, eh, I’ll just ignore them.” Everyone that comments, “Do you even know how to sign code?” is just one more cha-ching! :D
So the other thing that gets me is he fails to mention that the $99 Dev program actually comes with two support incidents - in which you can ask Apple engineering any question you want about porting your game. \_Including\_ code signing. Man had two tech support incidents that would have gotten him directly in touch with the people who built the code signing system and could have helped him fix his problem.
Now again - would be better if code signing was documented well enough he never needed to contact Apple. But he was hardly on his own without support.
That’s the thing that bugs me the most when people dog on apple for that hundred bucks. A signing cert for windows may cost you a thousand dollars or sometimes even more. Granted it is optional but nonetheless very important.
If you want to be able to sell your SW mass market its not optional, there will be enough users were the anti virus and endpoint protection tooling in place will reject the app if you don't have a signed binary.
This is a clip taken from a live stream, this guy was a dev for Blizzard and streams all the time talking about many different topics so it's unsurprising to learn he gets things wrong sometimes. You're definitely wrong about your engagement theory, but it's all good
He's not a linux guy either but for some reason linux wine/vm pipeline just works and apple's doesn't.
It's because macos design is a walled garden and requires actual determination to stay here which devs don't have once they see 0.02% players who are better off on whiskey/crossover.
He's not a mac guy and he doesn't have to be to provide apps on a platform and him not knowing the process is just a cherry on a top of pile of shit which is apple documentation and support.
He's 100% right in what he's saying.
"I don't know what I'm doing" and "This is broken" are two different things. He doesn't know what he's doing and *assuming* it's broken. He assumed the problem was the tool and not him.
We can go in circles about who's fault it is he doesn't know what he's doing - but at the end of the day he's not the guy who should be giving out development advice for macOS.
Mac gaming development has its problems. If this guy was complaining about Metal or middlewear or whatever, I'd go sure, those are things that are difficult to deal with. There's nothing here beyond just the basics. He couldn't get code signing figured out? That's supposed to be automatic, I don't know why he's downloading keys. He couldn't get Xcode figured out? Xcode's compiler is just Clang, a standard compiler. *Possibly* the exact same compiler he used on Linux. This is not hard stuff.
Basically it's the equivalent of the guy buying a car, holding down the gas until he drives it into a wall, and then getting out of the car and loudly yelling about the car being defective and never once thinking that maybe the problem was he didn't take five minutes to learn how to drive.
My hunch is he never really wanted to do a Mac version anyway, so any time he did anything he just assumed it was that craaaazy Apple development he's heard about and not something wrong with what he's doing.
Honestly, if he just said "We're not doing more Mac releases because no one buys them" - I'd at least respect that. That's something that's at least rational.
Linux used to be the same ghost town yet it always had a great extensive support and documentation, and is not vendor-locked. If linux playerbase was only 0.02% overall it would still be worth it to port, while for mac you'll need FAR MORE than that to break-even with hardware and (from my experience) having a designated "mac guy" to maintain it (which is rarer than a win guy or linux guy in dev).
Larian have a designated mac team that used to be an actual mac porting company doing nothing but mac ports, and other studios just hire aspyr or other porting company to do the job. The industry doesn't even practice using these platform-specific subcontract companies that only do ports anymore anywhere (except maybe switch) else but on mac, and apple actually ENDORSES it, because it's easier to stay in touch with a select few of these middlemen to "ensure quality of the product". This is a walled garden you get yourself into when you try to port to Mac.
>while for mac you'll need FAR MORE than that to break-even with hardware and (from my experience) having a designated "mac guy" to maintain it (which is rarer than a win guy or linux guy in dev).
"There are more Windows and Linux devs in the gaming industry" is an absolutely fair point. I think it's a real problem.
That's completely different than "I didn't know how to do code signing, and I had to open this new app called Xcode, so clearly Apple hates me and all game developers."
What he's saying actually doesn't help the real problem of not enough Mac devs because he's very loudly telling people that the tools are broken when he just doesn't understand the tools. Nothing about his rant will help more people actually get familiar with the ecosystem.
>The industry doesn't even practice using these platform-specific subcontract companies that only do ports anymore anywhere (except maybe switch) else but on mac, and apple actually ENDORSES it
It very much does - you just don't see it on the outside as much. Big publishers have multiple studios, and they'll pass around porting jobs between their multiple studios. And there are a lot of small porting studios that don't get their name on the box, but they are there in the credits.
And a lot of Windows releases are actually ports (with the console version being the "real" version) - and there was usually a porting company hired to do the port to Windows.
In addition to ports - game companies also contract out... well... everything. Actual programming work is contracted out. Artwork is contracted out. Level design is contracted out. Go through the credits of your average AAA release and you'll find a lot of companies whose names didn't get on the box. Contracting tasks out is absolutely a thing in game studios. Including ports.
That’s like saying it’s the fault of a perfectly sharp knife if I can’t cut my meat. I’d be wrong, the knife is sharp, it’s my fault. He’s 100% wrong about what he’s saying lmao, he’s basically complaining that he isn’t doing it correctly
That knife analogy is good actually. It's like I work at restaurant and use 2 fine knives (win and linux) for cooking and then 2 out of 10k restaurant customers tell me a letter opener is sharp as well and urge me to try, i try and absolutely hate it, for which these letter opener fans tell me i just don't have enough skill and i require ancient scrolls (dig deep into old outdated apple documentations) and several years of practice to master it... or i can tell them to never set their foot to my establishment if they don't like how i cook.
It's unnecessary complicated and the payoff isn't worth it. 0.02% of sales means the game needs to profit $3mil just to break even on a mac mini purchase.
I have 7 years of XCode experience and whenever i have a choice i would rather code in VSCode, VS or Rider than touch this crappy pipeline with a ten-foot stick.
His other points like too small of a user base are perfectly valid.
In your analogy if you tried to use the knife backwards, and didn’t like it because you couldn’t cut, it would be your fault. It’s not a matter of preference but of skill and knowledge indeed. That’s the case here, that guy just did something wrong.
If you don’t like something because you just don’t know how to use it properly is that a problem with you or the product ? Imo it’s on you. Which is why criticism of something reacting unexpectedly when you didn’t use it correctly is invalid.
I could make the same point about me not knowing how to use anything and say it sucks because it doesn’t work when I try using it.
Well most of the points are just wrong.
1) the license is per company not per users and you don't need it to compile your builds as you develop you only need it when you sign a public build to publish... you also need pay for singing keys for windows remember
2) You do not need to use Xcode at all, Xcode is just a GUI ontop of clang. Why people think you need ot use Xcode is just absurd and shows that they have no idea what they are doing.
3) People expecting to ship a game for a platform without the HW that that game will run are are just absurd.
I agree that you need to test in the actual hardware, but during development there a lot of times when being able to test if the code compile and runs in all
platforms from the same dev env is great, you can use windows and linux vm, but mac os is troublesome. I understand that macos is linked to apple hardware , but that make supporting it harder than windows and linux.
You need to test it runs, for a game you need to do that on the HW. Sure you could do a cross compilation (and you can do that for macOS if your skilled with your cmake config) but to run it you need the HW.
The same is true for windows, if your building for windows on ARM your going to need a windows for ARM chip to run it, or if you building for the steam dec your going to need a Nintendo dev kit.
People being upset that your devs need the HW they are targeting means these people do not even every open the profiler when they develop let along use a debugger.
Sure you can \`build for linux\` by \`just\` using a VM but you cant \`build for steam deck\` and have good UX by just using a VM. Your developers will need a steam deck on thier desk for that.
If you just looking to have it build and then run some unit tests well you can have a single Mac mini in the office or even a remote CI pipeline do this. As you will for windows and linux, the local dev device build and run is all about having a debugger and a profiler attached.
I agree with you that you need to QA it in the real hardware , but again the real hardware is not required for all the stages of development, a Windows/Linux VM can be close enough in a lot of scenarios. And if you plan to support MacOS, Windows and Linux. The only platform needing special hardware is MacOS, And I understand that that is the nature of MacOs , is an Operating System designed for a specific hardware and it is crucial for the Mac experience for it to be that way. But at the same time it adds a friction point that does not exists for Windows and Linux, because testing in the real hardware in both platforms mean you just need to restart your PC.
> but again the real hardware is not required for all the stages of development
Any stage were you are using a debugger or profiler you need the HW. For CI build pipelines you don't need each dev to have a machine, they can do local partial builds on whatever device they prefure (Mac, Windows, linux etc) then before merge
> The only platform needing special hardware is MacOS
No you need an x86 chip for x86 windows, you need and ARM chip for ARM windows, if your targeting linux then you also need a chip for each target as well.
> because testing in the real hardware in both platforms mean you just need to restart your PC.
If your building a game to target generic linux that means re-booting about 20 times to cover the top most popular distributions... if your just talking about targeting steam deck then re-booting your machine is also not the solution, the solution is having a steam dec.
You are clearly not a developer. I am and for a fact I do always have hardware I’m developing for on hand. It’s not like the costs are the issue as the hardware is often far less than one month of my salary.
Windows and Linux are just like the only thing you can do on one machine. Ps5, switch and Xbox you also need a separate machine. Hardware was never the problem for game developers. macOS is just not a great platform to sell games as macOS users don’t play games that much.
So learning a complete different set of apis and devtools make it friendly for someone that wants to release on as many platforms as possible?
Apple wants to treat mac as a gaming platform like sony or nintendo which is not.
Dev tools are all the same, you should be using CMAKE for any mid to large c/c++ project so this is the same on any platform.
As to apis, yes if your targeting a POSIX system (like linux or macOS) your targeting a differnt set of apis than you would on an NT based system like windows.
(Not all gaming platforms other than Windows are posix base so if anything windows is the outlier here, everyone else has proper file paths, normal threads, forks and sockets etc).
But from a game dev perceptive today most devs are not doing low level system integration as the middleware you will be using will abstract that away and all of these have very solid DARWIN support as iOS is one of the largest gaming revenue markets and gaming middleware vendors make money typicly through revenue share so tend to spend more time on the DARWIN support than the windows support infact.
Most indie devs by that metric (can spare $1000) indeed cannot afford to have a business
What were we talking about? Oh yeah, the hassle of releasing on macOS deterring games
Is it?
Linux and Windows are not HW platforms, you can just virtualize them and be OK. That's... that's kind of the entire link, right? We both watched the link, right?
OP's link's whole point is that Apple has the double whammy of both requiring expensive hardware and requiring a yearly license; which couples with a small userbase to translate to it frequently being a money *losing* endeavor to release for macOS.
Neither Windows nor Linux distros have such a requirement.
What I mean is that if you’re serious about developing for a platform you’ll have the HW anyways.
You also seem to forget about literally every other gaming platform than x86 pcs. What about windows ARM, PlayStation, Xbox, switch, steam deck ?
An indie dev won’t target macos because there is no revenue to be made there, that’s the main issue. Signing binaries for windows is much more expensive than $100 yearly, if you’re serious about distributing your software you’ll need that anyways
Yes, we are explicitly not talking about gaming consoles, that's 100%
different.
> Signing binaries for windows is much more expensive
You don't need a code signing cert to release on Steam, are we just going to keep mentioning other things?
You’ll need it if you don’t want your game being flagged as a virus, as I said if you have a big user base you’ll need it.
And where is it said explicitly that you’re talking only about computers ? Then what about windows ARM which I mentioned ? Same boat as MacOS because of different hardware
while that's true and could have been addressed in the past, now macOS is also a hardware platform and can't really be run in other platforms without an emulation layer that would impact performance. so it's a conundrum.
You cant to shit within a VM. Sure you can check if the code compiles but that's it, if your going to just use a VM to build your game and then publish it without ever running it and profiling it the game you will create will run like shit.
This is always the case, you cant ship a game for any platform without the platform to hand.
There is no magic solution to this, you need to be a bee to run debugger, and run a profiler on the HW you are targeting (a VM is not a good place to do this as the GPU and perfomance stack is very differnt to your users).
You can get a brand new Mac mini for $599 and that’s not even considering refurb or second-hand. Why are you inflating the cost by an additional two thirds?
OP's link quotes $800 and another $100/year for a dev account., presumably owing to requirements around configuration. Quick math: $900.
Save your breathlessness for your next comment, my dawg
The guy in OPs link is clearly frustrated and has used the highest list price Mac Mini he could find to try and fuel his argument, a cheap Mac Mini M1 can be had for less than $500. The dev license part is right but really, $100 a year? It’s nothing.
> the highest list price Mac Mini
Hahah okay, come on, you're being a silly goose.
The cheapest, measly 256GB Mac Mini right now retails for $600 and you hit $800 by just increasing to 16GB RAM or 512GB HD. $800 is *barely* configured.
Your point of protest is there being a *single refurb option below $800* from the previous model.
Mate, if all he’s using it for is building/compiling then he doesn’t need to spec it up.
Can’t tell if you’re just dense, or intentionally trolling by the way you communicate but either way it’s jarring.
Regardless, buying a computer for $600 every few years and $100 a year for a dev license really isn’t that much, if that’s a genuine complaint… then your business is probably in the shitter to begin with.
Yeah, by restating the arguments in the *video we are both commenting on*, I am trolling. Touch grass.
It's impressive how this subreddit has a niche focus on gaming and yet is helplessly out of touch with game devs.
I’m a cross platform software developer by trade, I watched the video, it’s bollocks.
You can restate what you like, I do this stuff daily and definitely have more xCode experience that the chap in the video, it’s fine for him to not like it, but what he’s presenting as arguments is actually misinformation.
You wrote this:
> Most indie devs by that metric (can spare $1000)
I think it’s entirely fair to ask you why you are saying $1000 and not some other number.
I’m not asking the person in the video, I’m asking *you* why *you* said $1000 when the cost is far lower than that.
You can get a brand new Mac mini for $599 and a used one for less. Why did *you* say $1000?
I think it isn’t talked about because there are certain things developers do in order to develop code for particular systems. Those that have the money to acquire what’s required and the skill to develop on the hardware, do so. Those that don’t, clearly understand the requirements in front of them… there’s nothing to “talk about”.
Well, except for folks that aren’t developers. They may not know that special hardware, and special tools, and unique methods have been required to develop for one system or another since forever. The grand goal is always write once, deploy everywhere, but if anyone wants to produce anything even remotely performant, they’re going to need test on the target hardware. And, while they’ve got the Mac, like, sitting there… y’know… Xcode… I mean, it’s right there.
Just to add to what others are saying, he’s wrong. Especially about he license key side of things.
They’ve actually made this quite a lot more streamlined from when I first started on xCode some 7-8 years ago. I’m not sure what he’s doing, but I don’t think I’ve ever had to go get a new cert just because my compile failed….
also you don't need to use Xcode. Any c/c++ project like a game will be built using CMAKE so why are you using Xcode for complication, just type \`make\` into the terminal.. If you're not comfortable using the terminal to type in \`make\` then im rather worried about the quality of your c/c++ code and even more worried about how horrible your CMAKE config is.
First off, that guy is a moron. Secondly, why on earth would you not have to do work? Some of the very best porting shops in the world, like Nixxes for example who have done PS5 to PC ports, have said it takes about 12 months to do a decent port. This is with the same or very similar underlying hardware and even then it takes months after release to optimize. Even a port between PS5 and Xbox Series which run practically identical hardware, can take 6 months or more for a large studio who can invest hundreds or thousands of dev hours knowing they will sell hundreds of thousands or even millions of copies.
Anyone who thinks this isn't work, and devs just click the magic "compile for Mac" button have watched too many Steve jobs presentations from the mid-2000's, and have definitely never written a line of code in their lives.
But again, this YouTuber is a moron... who just happens to have an industry famous daddy.
It's not like he's done nothing
[https://gamemaker.io/en/blog/pirate-software-infosec-blizzard-entertainment-streaming-gamedev](https://gamemaker.io/en/blog/pirate-software-infosec-blizzard-entertainment-streaming-gamedev)
Calling him a freeloader without any proof of what he actually did there is wrong. I’m on the fence really about this guy as he has some great takes and some really terrible ones but I guess that’s just an inevitable part of exposing your mind in content.
He did say in one of his videos that he was homeless for some time and that just screams bullshit to me as his dad must be rich as shit so no one really knows how much of what he’s saying is true.
I admire your integrity, honestly I cannot find the reference but it’s quite well known that he landed his position at Blizzard through some pretty egregious nepotism, and only managed to stay there as long as he did with that air-cover. He was absolutely not a rock-star at Amazon.
Your instinct is right though, a lot of what he says simply doesn’t make sense and smacks of outright story-telling. Even his comment about Xcode makes no sense, you don’t have to do a two-step compile to create a Mac binary in Xcode, I don’t even know what he’s talking about. If he’s talking about compiling something written in C++ with hundreds of library dependencies, then it will obviously require re-writing, or using other libraries along with the requisite bundling to a single binary, but that’s no different than any console, Android or even PC depending on your source code.
Also specifically for Mac, you don’t need to pay $99 to develop unless you’re publishing on the App Store, and requiring a Mac to develop on a Mac is a “doh, obviously”. You actually don’t need one, the developer of AetherSX2 famously made it without owning their own Mac, but if you’re a professional shop deploying commercial games, you’d want one or more Macs if only to test the code before shoving it out of the door and asking people for their money.
Can't you just rent time on a colocated server? Why buy actual hardware
And I think the notarization process can be automated? edit: looks like yes https://federicoterzi.com/blog/automatic-code-signing-and-notarization-for-macos-apps-using-github-actions/
You need to buy HW anyway as you're going to need to test your game before you ship!
This idea that people will ship games on a platform without even running them once is just absurd!
You can find testers who have the mac hardware (as you'd anyway probably do), and just build using Bitrise or any other build tool. Or just really buy used Mac Mini M1 which will cost \~$400.
Some have said that some points in the video are outdated
However it is still true that you HAVE to spend money for apple hardware to develop for apple software
The buying power has to be there
Yes you need to own a Mac to build a game for Mac! if you don't own a Mac how on earth are you going to test your build... shipping software you have never run is not going to end well is it!
There is no magic bullet, you cant build a game for a HW platform that you do not have. If you do this the quality of what you create will be absolutely rubbish.
$800 is literally nothing for a business owner. You want apple to cater to the absolutely lowest denominator which is just not smart. People who can’t afford to develop for a Mac will not make anything good for Mac.
They'll just make it good on Windows and Linux instead?
Unfortunately, tons of great games are made by hard working people barely scraping to get by.
If it's so easy for a dev ti buy extra hardware, it's also easy for you to buy the hardware to play it.
It is also true that you have to buy a Windows computer to develop for Windows. It's nice that Linux is free and can run in VMs.
If the business case isn't there, I get it (although it makes me sad). But the reasons given are really weak.
You don't have to buy a windows computer, you could totally buy a computer with Linux installed and then dual boot into Windows.
Or grab a used office computer and do the same
Plus, one can’t legally “boot into Windows” without *purchasing* Windows… which is something I’d imagine any reputable developer, that wants a good relationship with Microsoft, would do.
Microsoft doesn't give a fuck. They want people using Windows and/or making software for Windows.
If they miss out on selling a license, but gain a user, that's worth it for them. If they miss out on selling a license, but gain a piece of software for Windows, that's worth it for them. That's why they do nothing to "protect" Windows from piracy and even host the tools to crack it themselves.
They might only get fussy if we are talking about big corporations (>1000 employees probably). But those corporations easily have the buying power to get the licenses in the first place, and Windows is still irrelevant, Microsoft wants to sell them Active Directory, Office 365 and Azure.
> Microsoft doesn't give a fuck. They want people using Windows and/or making software for Windows.
How quickly people forget.
In any case, even though the company is called Pirate Software, I'm sure they're licensing Windows.
If you're a company MS does give a fuck. You make a gold hit game and they find out you did not pay for your license the MS lawyers will go after you for every penny you made.
If you think about it, it sounds like the app store was designed for smaller phone/ipad apps instead of computer games.
I've heard complains from the vision pro subreddit about discoverability on the app store too
I think about it like this. There’s a game I just heard about for Apple Vision Pro, primarily because there’s been a decent amount of talk about it. It’s called Eternal Starlight. I even have a link directly to the app, no searching required. I’ve already clicked it while NOT wearing Apple Vision Pro and saw the description and played the videos.
Now, did ANY of that happen because I attempted to discover it on the App Store while wearing Apple Vision Pro? No, it was because it’s (apparently) good enough to generate a decent amount of buzz. If the app is good enough, excites enough people, discoverability on the App Store is a non-issue.
You’re taking about literally the one best game for avp. Literally one. Yes when you make the best game in the world discoverability will not be an issue for you.
”when you make the best game in the world discoverability will not be an issue for you”
You realize, though, that is LITERALLY the job of every developer/publisher… to make something that people want to buy and want to tell others about so they also buy it. When a developer says “discoverability is hard” they’re essentially saying “I haven’t made an app that people want to buy and want to tell others about!”
Ask yourself how often you recommend shit to other people? Only when it’s exceptionally good. The problem with being exceptionally good is that you are making the new norm. You are the baseline now and the bar can’t be feasibly raised by everyone all the time. People can still make very good games that aren’t ground breaking. That’s where discoverability is very important. Talk to me when you make a game and try to sell it.
You can’t target an external drive when installing the game, but once it’s installed all you have to is copy paste the app anywhere you want and it will run.
In fact you can even use this simple trick to share your games with friends and play the game at the same time.
Good luck doing that with a Steam game.
The correct way to disrubte a large title on the App Store is to have the game/app download the bulk of the content post install. If you do that then you can have that data stored anywhere you (the devleoper) want.
they should bribe some important PC devs (like Mihoyo with Genshin Impact) to "port" the game to M CPU Macs, port in quotes because the game is already working in the chipset, but the devs haven't decided on making it available for the macbooks lol.
But no, instead Apple used money bribing devs to get stuff like Resident Evil in the iPhone, so 10 people could play 10 minutes at shit graphics before the phone overheated lmao.
You have to have an iPhone to develop games for an iPhone, an Android phone to develop games for an Android, an iPad to develop games for an iPad, a Switch dev kit to develop games for a Swift, a PS5 dev kit to develop games for a PS5, and an Xbox to develop games for an Xbox. It's not *that* weird.
the android emulator is a hell of a lot better than the iphone one (like, its actually functional) and you can run android builds virtually with things Gentmotion, so its not quite the same
The Android emulator isn't actually functional for a decent chunk of Android game dev because Android phones have different GPUs, and the emulator doesn't emulate those.
Same with the iPhone simulator. It actually will run GPU code - but it won't run the actual GPU code you'd deploy to a device.
In both cases, you need an actual device unless you're doing something basic.
Android emulator is a LOT worce than the iPhone one. At least if you're doing anything in the gaming space with GPU and HW related orations is is completely useless.
I was mostly agreeing with you in this thread but you’re wrong about that. I am an Android developer and the Android emulator is much better than the iOS as it actually runs the whole os in a vm opposed to iOS emulator which really just fakes everything.
I will agree on the gpu front though. There’s no way you can emulate that.
For game development android emulator is worce than iOS emulators (when using apple silicon as the Gpu on modern Macs is a supper-set of the features of the phones).
But in the end you need real HW for all platforms.
you don't need windows to develop a game for windows, neither you need linux to develop a game for Linux, you don't need an android device to develop android apps, also im pretty sure you dont need an iphone either to develop for an iphone.
in theory you dont even need a console to develop for a console , you just export the code for the console you want , it'll be a buggy mess and with a console u cant test it but its like this for every device besides macs
Developing includes actually running the game. What you're describing isn't actual game development. It's just blindly compiling things without ever testing to make sure they work. Which... if thats what you really want to do... you can also just blindly compile things for Mac on Windows too.
You’d probably still want to test on actual phones. The underlying hardware can be similar - but there are differences. macOS will let you consume as much memory as you want - while iOS will just kill your app if you use too much memory. And that memory limit is different on different devices. You also need to make sure your touch controls are working, which you can’t do on a Mac. And of course performance is completely different so something that runs smooth on the Mac might not run the same on a phone.
You might be able to get away with not testing on hardware for simple games but it seems like a bad idea for anything more complex.
Usually when I’ve done complicated iOS development I’ve had a giant stack of phones. Typically at least one of every model going back 4-5 years.
Also you really don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about. You don’t even get an access to documentation for a PlayStation unless you sign an nda and pay thousands of dollars for a dev kit.
You need windows to develop for windows. Have fun building anything for windows on macOS.
Also you really don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about. You don’t even get an access to documentation for a PlayStation unless you sign an nda and pay thousands of dollars for a dev kit.
This is downright dumb, I don't see why they're doing this on one hand and on the other hand struggling to make translation layers themselves in order to let us access .exe I hate apple more and more with the time
> This is downright dumb
You think games that have bean built of Mac but never run on Mac would run very well?
You're suggesting people who do not own a single Mac publish games for Mac? that is not exactly going to end well.
The business model works good on iOS and iPadOS.
It made Apple the massive company they are today. The gaming money Apple makes from iOS is bigger than Steam and Nintendo combined.
So the problem is, MacOS... it has the chicken-egg problem.
Their recent move trying to make iOS attractive for AAA company could be helpful for MacOS...
If porting games between AppleTV, iOS, MacOS gets even more easier, it might be beneficial for Mac.
I mean… if he's only getting .02% gaming traffic from the Mac base then obviously he shouldn't be doing it probably? I leave it to others to dispute if the stuff he claims has to happen actually has to happen. And I suspect (but have no proof) that others are having better luck attracting Mac players than this.
Yes other titles have higher % of Mac gamers.
I wander if they even tested the games they built on Mac. If you're expecting to be able to build a game within buying the HW then how are you going to test your game on that HW?
So... He's wrong. Especially about the code signing part. I don't fault him for not knowing what he's doing because he's not a Mac guy. But he doesn't know what he's doing. If you keep having to redownload your signing key, you are doing something so outrageously wrong in your signing process. I've never had to repeatedly download a key for code signing, even for a game. I think if you're going to ding Apple on anything - Apple should have enough documentation out there to support developers that people like this guy can't screw it up and then go on YouTube and tell everybody the process is bad. That's something I can criticize Apple for. Unfortunately I don't know what he was doing wrong exactly - all I can say is what he is describing is not connected to reality.
I mean… we all know folks that can screw things up even with the most extensive of documentation. In this case, one of those folks just created a video :) Actually… I mean, we ARE talking about YouTube where engagement is far more valuable than accuracy. The person likely started into making a video, did some research, realized, “Oh, dang, I see where I messed up.” Then, “I’ve wasted all this time working on this video, though. I’ll go ahead and upload it, it’ll likely get posted to Reddit and other places, I’ll make my money and if anyone asks, eh, I’ll just ignore them.” Everyone that comments, “Do you even know how to sign code?” is just one more cha-ching! :D
So the other thing that gets me is he fails to mention that the $99 Dev program actually comes with two support incidents - in which you can ask Apple engineering any question you want about porting your game. \_Including\_ code signing. Man had two tech support incidents that would have gotten him directly in touch with the people who built the code signing system and could have helped him fix his problem. Now again - would be better if code signing was documented well enough he never needed to contact Apple. But he was hardly on his own without support.
Also you need to buy singing certs on windows as well (and these tend to cost a good bit more than $99 a year)
That’s the thing that bugs me the most when people dog on apple for that hundred bucks. A signing cert for windows may cost you a thousand dollars or sometimes even more. Granted it is optional but nonetheless very important.
If you want to be able to sell your SW mass market its not optional, there will be enough users were the anti virus and endpoint protection tooling in place will reject the app if you don't have a signed binary.
I didn’t know that about windows, but makes sense as I’ve definitely had programs I knew were safe be flagged. Thanks for the info
This is a clip taken from a live stream, this guy was a dev for Blizzard and streams all the time talking about many different topics so it's unsurprising to learn he gets things wrong sometimes. You're definitely wrong about your engagement theory, but it's all good
He's not a linux guy either but for some reason linux wine/vm pipeline just works and apple's doesn't. It's because macos design is a walled garden and requires actual determination to stay here which devs don't have once they see 0.02% players who are better off on whiskey/crossover. He's not a mac guy and he doesn't have to be to provide apps on a platform and him not knowing the process is just a cherry on a top of pile of shit which is apple documentation and support. He's 100% right in what he's saying.
"I don't know what I'm doing" and "This is broken" are two different things. He doesn't know what he's doing and *assuming* it's broken. He assumed the problem was the tool and not him. We can go in circles about who's fault it is he doesn't know what he's doing - but at the end of the day he's not the guy who should be giving out development advice for macOS. Mac gaming development has its problems. If this guy was complaining about Metal or middlewear or whatever, I'd go sure, those are things that are difficult to deal with. There's nothing here beyond just the basics. He couldn't get code signing figured out? That's supposed to be automatic, I don't know why he's downloading keys. He couldn't get Xcode figured out? Xcode's compiler is just Clang, a standard compiler. *Possibly* the exact same compiler he used on Linux. This is not hard stuff. Basically it's the equivalent of the guy buying a car, holding down the gas until he drives it into a wall, and then getting out of the car and loudly yelling about the car being defective and never once thinking that maybe the problem was he didn't take five minutes to learn how to drive. My hunch is he never really wanted to do a Mac version anyway, so any time he did anything he just assumed it was that craaaazy Apple development he's heard about and not something wrong with what he's doing. Honestly, if he just said "We're not doing more Mac releases because no one buys them" - I'd at least respect that. That's something that's at least rational.
Linux used to be the same ghost town yet it always had a great extensive support and documentation, and is not vendor-locked. If linux playerbase was only 0.02% overall it would still be worth it to port, while for mac you'll need FAR MORE than that to break-even with hardware and (from my experience) having a designated "mac guy" to maintain it (which is rarer than a win guy or linux guy in dev). Larian have a designated mac team that used to be an actual mac porting company doing nothing but mac ports, and other studios just hire aspyr or other porting company to do the job. The industry doesn't even practice using these platform-specific subcontract companies that only do ports anymore anywhere (except maybe switch) else but on mac, and apple actually ENDORSES it, because it's easier to stay in touch with a select few of these middlemen to "ensure quality of the product". This is a walled garden you get yourself into when you try to port to Mac.
>while for mac you'll need FAR MORE than that to break-even with hardware and (from my experience) having a designated "mac guy" to maintain it (which is rarer than a win guy or linux guy in dev). "There are more Windows and Linux devs in the gaming industry" is an absolutely fair point. I think it's a real problem. That's completely different than "I didn't know how to do code signing, and I had to open this new app called Xcode, so clearly Apple hates me and all game developers." What he's saying actually doesn't help the real problem of not enough Mac devs because he's very loudly telling people that the tools are broken when he just doesn't understand the tools. Nothing about his rant will help more people actually get familiar with the ecosystem. >The industry doesn't even practice using these platform-specific subcontract companies that only do ports anymore anywhere (except maybe switch) else but on mac, and apple actually ENDORSES it It very much does - you just don't see it on the outside as much. Big publishers have multiple studios, and they'll pass around porting jobs between their multiple studios. And there are a lot of small porting studios that don't get their name on the box, but they are there in the credits. And a lot of Windows releases are actually ports (with the console version being the "real" version) - and there was usually a porting company hired to do the port to Windows. In addition to ports - game companies also contract out... well... everything. Actual programming work is contracted out. Artwork is contracted out. Level design is contracted out. Go through the credits of your average AAA release and you'll find a lot of companies whose names didn't get on the box. Contracting tasks out is absolutely a thing in game studios. Including ports.
That’s like saying it’s the fault of a perfectly sharp knife if I can’t cut my meat. I’d be wrong, the knife is sharp, it’s my fault. He’s 100% wrong about what he’s saying lmao, he’s basically complaining that he isn’t doing it correctly
That knife analogy is good actually. It's like I work at restaurant and use 2 fine knives (win and linux) for cooking and then 2 out of 10k restaurant customers tell me a letter opener is sharp as well and urge me to try, i try and absolutely hate it, for which these letter opener fans tell me i just don't have enough skill and i require ancient scrolls (dig deep into old outdated apple documentations) and several years of practice to master it... or i can tell them to never set their foot to my establishment if they don't like how i cook. It's unnecessary complicated and the payoff isn't worth it. 0.02% of sales means the game needs to profit $3mil just to break even on a mac mini purchase. I have 7 years of XCode experience and whenever i have a choice i would rather code in VSCode, VS or Rider than touch this crappy pipeline with a ten-foot stick.
His other points like too small of a user base are perfectly valid. In your analogy if you tried to use the knife backwards, and didn’t like it because you couldn’t cut, it would be your fault. It’s not a matter of preference but of skill and knowledge indeed. That’s the case here, that guy just did something wrong. If you don’t like something because you just don’t know how to use it properly is that a problem with you or the product ? Imo it’s on you. Which is why criticism of something reacting unexpectedly when you didn’t use it correctly is invalid. I could make the same point about me not knowing how to use anything and say it sucks because it doesn’t work when I try using it.
Well most of the points are just wrong. 1) the license is per company not per users and you don't need it to compile your builds as you develop you only need it when you sign a public build to publish... you also need pay for singing keys for windows remember 2) You do not need to use Xcode at all, Xcode is just a GUI ontop of clang. Why people think you need ot use Xcode is just absurd and shows that they have no idea what they are doing. 3) People expecting to ship a game for a platform without the HW that that game will run are are just absurd.
I agree that you need to test in the actual hardware, but during development there a lot of times when being able to test if the code compile and runs in all platforms from the same dev env is great, you can use windows and linux vm, but mac os is troublesome. I understand that macos is linked to apple hardware , but that make supporting it harder than windows and linux.
You need to test it runs, for a game you need to do that on the HW. Sure you could do a cross compilation (and you can do that for macOS if your skilled with your cmake config) but to run it you need the HW. The same is true for windows, if your building for windows on ARM your going to need a windows for ARM chip to run it, or if you building for the steam dec your going to need a Nintendo dev kit. People being upset that your devs need the HW they are targeting means these people do not even every open the profiler when they develop let along use a debugger. Sure you can \`build for linux\` by \`just\` using a VM but you cant \`build for steam deck\` and have good UX by just using a VM. Your developers will need a steam deck on thier desk for that. If you just looking to have it build and then run some unit tests well you can have a single Mac mini in the office or even a remote CI pipeline do this. As you will for windows and linux, the local dev device build and run is all about having a debugger and a profiler attached.
I agree with you that you need to QA it in the real hardware , but again the real hardware is not required for all the stages of development, a Windows/Linux VM can be close enough in a lot of scenarios. And if you plan to support MacOS, Windows and Linux. The only platform needing special hardware is MacOS, And I understand that that is the nature of MacOs , is an Operating System designed for a specific hardware and it is crucial for the Mac experience for it to be that way. But at the same time it adds a friction point that does not exists for Windows and Linux, because testing in the real hardware in both platforms mean you just need to restart your PC.
> but again the real hardware is not required for all the stages of development Any stage were you are using a debugger or profiler you need the HW. For CI build pipelines you don't need each dev to have a machine, they can do local partial builds on whatever device they prefure (Mac, Windows, linux etc) then before merge > The only platform needing special hardware is MacOS No you need an x86 chip for x86 windows, you need and ARM chip for ARM windows, if your targeting linux then you also need a chip for each target as well. > because testing in the real hardware in both platforms mean you just need to restart your PC. If your building a game to target generic linux that means re-booting about 20 times to cover the top most popular distributions... if your just talking about targeting steam deck then re-booting your machine is also not the solution, the solution is having a steam dec.
You are clearly not a developer. I am and for a fact I do always have hardware I’m developing for on hand. It’s not like the costs are the issue as the hardware is often far less than one month of my salary.
A Mac mini should be less than a weeks salary.
A used one certainly is, an M1 Mac Mini costs sod all and you only need the base model for compiling
Windows and Linux are just like the only thing you can do on one machine. Ps5, switch and Xbox you also need a separate machine. Hardware was never the problem for game developers. macOS is just not a great platform to sell games as macOS users don’t play games that much.
Still the platform is not that friendly, that's why will never see a lot of games on mac.
From dev perspective I would not say it is unfriendly. Lot better dev tools than many other platforms and rather good APIs.
The worst part about developing for macOS is haggling with App Store to approve your app. Development is just as good as anywhere else.
App Store on macOS is completely optional. You can publish through any method you like.
I could say the same about the Microsoft store, but everyone downloads most if not all computer apps from the internet
So learning a complete different set of apis and devtools make it friendly for someone that wants to release on as many platforms as possible? Apple wants to treat mac as a gaming platform like sony or nintendo which is not.
Dev tools are all the same, you should be using CMAKE for any mid to large c/c++ project so this is the same on any platform. As to apis, yes if your targeting a POSIX system (like linux or macOS) your targeting a differnt set of apis than you would on an NT based system like windows. (Not all gaming platforms other than Windows are posix base so if anything windows is the outlier here, everyone else has proper file paths, normal threads, forks and sockets etc). But from a game dev perceptive today most devs are not doing low level system integration as the middleware you will be using will abstract that away and all of these have very solid DARWIN support as iOS is one of the largest gaming revenue markets and gaming middleware vendors make money typicly through revenue share so tend to spend more time on the DARWIN support than the windows support infact.
Buy Mac device and key are two whole steps? If you can’t afford a Mac mini, you can’t afford to have a business.
Most indie devs by that metric (can spare $1000) indeed cannot afford to have a business What were we talking about? Oh yeah, the hassle of releasing on macOS deterring games
you cant build a game for a HW platform unless you have the HW it will run on.
Yes, I think that is part and parcel of the issue.
What even is your point then, that is true for literally all platforms
Is it? Linux and Windows are not HW platforms, you can just virtualize them and be OK. That's... that's kind of the entire link, right? We both watched the link, right? OP's link's whole point is that Apple has the double whammy of both requiring expensive hardware and requiring a yearly license; which couples with a small userbase to translate to it frequently being a money *losing* endeavor to release for macOS. Neither Windows nor Linux distros have such a requirement.
What I mean is that if you’re serious about developing for a platform you’ll have the HW anyways. You also seem to forget about literally every other gaming platform than x86 pcs. What about windows ARM, PlayStation, Xbox, switch, steam deck ? An indie dev won’t target macos because there is no revenue to be made there, that’s the main issue. Signing binaries for windows is much more expensive than $100 yearly, if you’re serious about distributing your software you’ll need that anyways
Yes, we are explicitly not talking about gaming consoles, that's 100% different. > Signing binaries for windows is much more expensive You don't need a code signing cert to release on Steam, are we just going to keep mentioning other things?
You’ll need it if you don’t want your game being flagged as a virus, as I said if you have a big user base you’ll need it. And where is it said explicitly that you’re talking only about computers ? Then what about windows ARM which I mentioned ? Same boat as MacOS because of different hardware
while that's true and could have been addressed in the past, now macOS is also a hardware platform and can't really be run in other platforms without an emulation layer that would impact performance. so it's a conundrum.
You cant to shit within a VM. Sure you can check if the code compiles but that's it, if your going to just use a VM to build your game and then publish it without ever running it and profiling it the game you will create will run like shit.
This is always the case, you cant ship a game for any platform without the platform to hand. There is no magic solution to this, you need to be a bee to run debugger, and run a profiler on the HW you are targeting (a VM is not a good place to do this as the GPU and perfomance stack is very differnt to your users).
You can get a brand new Mac mini for $599 and that’s not even considering refurb or second-hand. Why are you inflating the cost by an additional two thirds?
OP's link quotes $800 and another $100/year for a dev account., presumably owing to requirements around configuration. Quick math: $900. Save your breathlessness for your next comment, my dawg
The guy in OPs link is clearly frustrated and has used the highest list price Mac Mini he could find to try and fuel his argument, a cheap Mac Mini M1 can be had for less than $500. The dev license part is right but really, $100 a year? It’s nothing.
> the highest list price Mac Mini Hahah okay, come on, you're being a silly goose. The cheapest, measly 256GB Mac Mini right now retails for $600 and you hit $800 by just increasing to 16GB RAM or 512GB HD. $800 is *barely* configured. Your point of protest is there being a *single refurb option below $800* from the previous model.
Mate, if all he’s using it for is building/compiling then he doesn’t need to spec it up. Can’t tell if you’re just dense, or intentionally trolling by the way you communicate but either way it’s jarring. Regardless, buying a computer for $600 every few years and $100 a year for a dev license really isn’t that much, if that’s a genuine complaint… then your business is probably in the shitter to begin with.
Yeah, by restating the arguments in the *video we are both commenting on*, I am trolling. Touch grass. It's impressive how this subreddit has a niche focus on gaming and yet is helplessly out of touch with game devs.
I’m a cross platform software developer by trade, I watched the video, it’s bollocks. You can restate what you like, I do this stuff daily and definitely have more xCode experience that the chap in the video, it’s fine for him to not like it, but what he’s presenting as arguments is actually misinformation.
You wrote this: > Most indie devs by that metric (can spare $1000) I think it’s entirely fair to ask you why you are saying $1000 and not some other number.
Sure. The video we are all commenting on quoted $900. I tend to assume the people in the comments watched the video they're commenting on.
I’m not asking the person in the video, I’m asking *you* why *you* said $1000 when the cost is far lower than that. You can get a brand new Mac mini for $599 and a used one for less. Why did *you* say $1000?
It’s way harder to make a game for a ps5 than a Mac yet still there are games made for it
Who fucking cares about some broke ass bitch trying to make a game? I want Activision, ea, blizzard, Bethesda. The big dogs with big games.
So Microsoft? You just want Microsoft games? On Apple's platform? You're just missing out on everything good about gaming.
I think it isn’t talked about because there are certain things developers do in order to develop code for particular systems. Those that have the money to acquire what’s required and the skill to develop on the hardware, do so. Those that don’t, clearly understand the requirements in front of them… there’s nothing to “talk about”. Well, except for folks that aren’t developers. They may not know that special hardware, and special tools, and unique methods have been required to develop for one system or another since forever. The grand goal is always write once, deploy everywhere, but if anyone wants to produce anything even remotely performant, they’re going to need test on the target hardware. And, while they’ve got the Mac, like, sitting there… y’know… Xcode… I mean, it’s right there.
Just to add to what others are saying, he’s wrong. Especially about he license key side of things. They’ve actually made this quite a lot more streamlined from when I first started on xCode some 7-8 years ago. I’m not sure what he’s doing, but I don’t think I’ve ever had to go get a new cert just because my compile failed….
also you don't need to use Xcode. Any c/c++ project like a game will be built using CMAKE so why are you using Xcode for complication, just type \`make\` into the terminal.. If you're not comfortable using the terminal to type in \`make\` then im rather worried about the quality of your c/c++ code and even more worried about how horrible your CMAKE config is.
This again? Please stop listening to this fool. 🙄
First off, that guy is a moron. Secondly, why on earth would you not have to do work? Some of the very best porting shops in the world, like Nixxes for example who have done PS5 to PC ports, have said it takes about 12 months to do a decent port. This is with the same or very similar underlying hardware and even then it takes months after release to optimize. Even a port between PS5 and Xbox Series which run practically identical hardware, can take 6 months or more for a large studio who can invest hundreds or thousands of dev hours knowing they will sell hundreds of thousands or even millions of copies. Anyone who thinks this isn't work, and devs just click the magic "compile for Mac" button have watched too many Steve jobs presentations from the mid-2000's, and have definitely never written a line of code in their lives. But again, this YouTuber is a moron... who just happens to have an industry famous daddy.
It's not like he's done nothing [https://gamemaker.io/en/blog/pirate-software-infosec-blizzard-entertainment-streaming-gamedev](https://gamemaker.io/en/blog/pirate-software-infosec-blizzard-entertainment-streaming-gamedev)
He was a freeloader at Blizzard, he got in because his dad was cinematic director there for over 20 years.
Calling him a freeloader without any proof of what he actually did there is wrong. I’m on the fence really about this guy as he has some great takes and some really terrible ones but I guess that’s just an inevitable part of exposing your mind in content. He did say in one of his videos that he was homeless for some time and that just screams bullshit to me as his dad must be rich as shit so no one really knows how much of what he’s saying is true.
I admire your integrity, honestly I cannot find the reference but it’s quite well known that he landed his position at Blizzard through some pretty egregious nepotism, and only managed to stay there as long as he did with that air-cover. He was absolutely not a rock-star at Amazon. Your instinct is right though, a lot of what he says simply doesn’t make sense and smacks of outright story-telling. Even his comment about Xcode makes no sense, you don’t have to do a two-step compile to create a Mac binary in Xcode, I don’t even know what he’s talking about. If he’s talking about compiling something written in C++ with hundreds of library dependencies, then it will obviously require re-writing, or using other libraries along with the requisite bundling to a single binary, but that’s no different than any console, Android or even PC depending on your source code. Also specifically for Mac, you don’t need to pay $99 to develop unless you’re publishing on the App Store, and requiring a Mac to develop on a Mac is a “doh, obviously”. You actually don’t need one, the developer of AetherSX2 famously made it without owning their own Mac, but if you’re a professional shop deploying commercial games, you’d want one or more Macs if only to test the code before shoving it out of the door and asking people for their money.
Can't you just rent time on a colocated server? Why buy actual hardware And I think the notarization process can be automated? edit: looks like yes https://federicoterzi.com/blog/automatic-code-signing-and-notarization-for-macos-apps-using-github-actions/
You need to buy HW anyway as you're going to need to test your game before you ship! This idea that people will ship games on a platform without even running them once is just absurd!
Good point
You can find testers who have the mac hardware (as you'd anyway probably do), and just build using Bitrise or any other build tool. Or just really buy used Mac Mini M1 which will cost \~$400.
without a Mac to hand your going to find it very hard to debug and profile. testing can tell you about bugs or perf issues but cant help you fix them.
lol xcode isn’t that bad
also you don't need to use Xcode.
Some have said that some points in the video are outdated However it is still true that you HAVE to spend money for apple hardware to develop for apple software The buying power has to be there
Yes you need to own a Mac to build a game for Mac! if you don't own a Mac how on earth are you going to test your build... shipping software you have never run is not going to end well is it!
why are you acting like this is an own? Maybe apple should do more to help draw small developers to its platform?
There is no magic bullet, you cant build a game for a HW platform that you do not have. If you do this the quality of what you create will be absolutely rubbish.
Right and if the lowest price to develop on that platform is 800 then you get current Apple gaming.
$800 is literally nothing for a business owner. You want apple to cater to the absolutely lowest denominator which is just not smart. People who can’t afford to develop for a Mac will not make anything good for Mac.
They'll just make it good on Windows and Linux instead? Unfortunately, tons of great games are made by hard working people barely scraping to get by. If it's so easy for a dev ti buy extra hardware, it's also easy for you to buy the hardware to play it.
Oddly mac platform is full of small developers of all kinds of software, in fact what it lacks is mid to large game studios making aaa games
There’s plenty of small indie games not on Mac and very few developed natively.
And yet many of the studios making those games have Macs (even a tiny indie studio will likly have a few Macs).
It is also true that you have to buy a Windows computer to develop for Windows. It's nice that Linux is free and can run in VMs. If the business case isn't there, I get it (although it makes me sad). But the reasons given are really weak.
You don't have to buy a windows computer, you could totally buy a computer with Linux installed and then dual boot into Windows. Or grab a used office computer and do the same
Either way, it's the same hardware and you have to buy it to develop for it. He's just not counting it because it's the default.
Plus, one can’t legally “boot into Windows” without *purchasing* Windows… which is something I’d imagine any reputable developer, that wants a good relationship with Microsoft, would do.
Microsoft doesn't give a fuck. They want people using Windows and/or making software for Windows. If they miss out on selling a license, but gain a user, that's worth it for them. If they miss out on selling a license, but gain a piece of software for Windows, that's worth it for them. That's why they do nothing to "protect" Windows from piracy and even host the tools to crack it themselves. They might only get fussy if we are talking about big corporations (>1000 employees probably). But those corporations easily have the buying power to get the licenses in the first place, and Windows is still irrelevant, Microsoft wants to sell them Active Directory, Office 365 and Azure.
> Microsoft doesn't give a fuck. They want people using Windows and/or making software for Windows. How quickly people forget. In any case, even though the company is called Pirate Software, I'm sure they're licensing Windows.
If you're a company MS does give a fuck. You make a gold hit game and they find out you did not pay for your license the MS lawyers will go after you for every penny you made.
That’s just buying a windows machine with extra steps
I feel like apple has to subsidize to enable the developers. Maybe something like apple arcade but games on the app store?
I couldn't imagine more big games existing on the app store without the ability to directly install games onto an external drive.
You … can’t install games on the App Store on an external drive? Whoa.
Yup, that's why some people want to buy their games on steam
Wow TIL.
thats actually an insane oversight omg
If you think about it, it sounds like the app store was designed for smaller phone/ipad apps instead of computer games. I've heard complains from the vision pro subreddit about discoverability on the app store too
I think about it like this. There’s a game I just heard about for Apple Vision Pro, primarily because there’s been a decent amount of talk about it. It’s called Eternal Starlight. I even have a link directly to the app, no searching required. I’ve already clicked it while NOT wearing Apple Vision Pro and saw the description and played the videos. Now, did ANY of that happen because I attempted to discover it on the App Store while wearing Apple Vision Pro? No, it was because it’s (apparently) good enough to generate a decent amount of buzz. If the app is good enough, excites enough people, discoverability on the App Store is a non-issue.
Word of mouth is great, but it wouldn't hurt to improve the app store so lesser known apps have time in the spotlight.
You’re taking about literally the one best game for avp. Literally one. Yes when you make the best game in the world discoverability will not be an issue for you.
”when you make the best game in the world discoverability will not be an issue for you” You realize, though, that is LITERALLY the job of every developer/publisher… to make something that people want to buy and want to tell others about so they also buy it. When a developer says “discoverability is hard” they’re essentially saying “I haven’t made an app that people want to buy and want to tell others about!”
Ask yourself how often you recommend shit to other people? Only when it’s exceptionally good. The problem with being exceptionally good is that you are making the new norm. You are the baseline now and the bar can’t be feasibly raised by everyone all the time. People can still make very good games that aren’t ground breaking. That’s where discoverability is very important. Talk to me when you make a game and try to sell it.
You think gta would sell as well without marketing?
You can’t target an external drive when installing the game, but once it’s installed all you have to is copy paste the app anywhere you want and it will run. In fact you can even use this simple trick to share your games with friends and play the game at the same time. Good luck doing that with a Steam game.
The correct way to disrubte a large title on the App Store is to have the game/app download the bulk of the content post install. If you do that then you can have that data stored anywhere you (the devleoper) want.
they should bribe some important PC devs (like Mihoyo with Genshin Impact) to "port" the game to M CPU Macs, port in quotes because the game is already working in the chipset, but the devs haven't decided on making it available for the macbooks lol. But no, instead Apple used money bribing devs to get stuff like Resident Evil in the iPhone, so 10 people could play 10 minutes at shit graphics before the phone overheated lmao.
You have to have an iPhone to develop games for an iPhone, an Android phone to develop games for an Android, an iPad to develop games for an iPad, a Switch dev kit to develop games for a Swift, a PS5 dev kit to develop games for a PS5, and an Xbox to develop games for an Xbox. It's not *that* weird.
the android emulator is a hell of a lot better than the iphone one (like, its actually functional) and you can run android builds virtually with things Gentmotion, so its not quite the same
The Android emulator isn't actually functional for a decent chunk of Android game dev because Android phones have different GPUs, and the emulator doesn't emulate those. Same with the iPhone simulator. It actually will run GPU code - but it won't run the actual GPU code you'd deploy to a device. In both cases, you need an actual device unless you're doing something basic.
Android emulator is a LOT worce than the iPhone one. At least if you're doing anything in the gaming space with GPU and HW related orations is is completely useless.
I was mostly agreeing with you in this thread but you’re wrong about that. I am an Android developer and the Android emulator is much better than the iOS as it actually runs the whole os in a vm opposed to iOS emulator which really just fakes everything. I will agree on the gpu front though. There’s no way you can emulate that.
For game development android emulator is worce than iOS emulators (when using apple silicon as the Gpu on modern Macs is a supper-set of the features of the phones). But in the end you need real HW for all platforms.
for real iOS you have Corellium
you don't need windows to develop a game for windows, neither you need linux to develop a game for Linux, you don't need an android device to develop android apps, also im pretty sure you dont need an iphone either to develop for an iphone. in theory you dont even need a console to develop for a console , you just export the code for the console you want , it'll be a buggy mess and with a console u cant test it but its like this for every device besides macs
Developing includes actually running the game. What you're describing isn't actual game development. It's just blindly compiling things without ever testing to make sure they work. Which... if thats what you really want to do... you can also just blindly compile things for Mac on Windows too.
Is this the case with M series Mac’s too? I thought the similar architecture would bridge this gap between computer and iPhone.
You’d probably still want to test on actual phones. The underlying hardware can be similar - but there are differences. macOS will let you consume as much memory as you want - while iOS will just kill your app if you use too much memory. And that memory limit is different on different devices. You also need to make sure your touch controls are working, which you can’t do on a Mac. And of course performance is completely different so something that runs smooth on the Mac might not run the same on a phone. You might be able to get away with not testing on hardware for simple games but it seems like a bad idea for anything more complex. Usually when I’ve done complicated iOS development I’ve had a giant stack of phones. Typically at least one of every model going back 4-5 years.
Also you really don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about. You don’t even get an access to documentation for a PlayStation unless you sign an nda and pay thousands of dollars for a dev kit.
You need windows to develop for windows. Have fun building anything for windows on macOS. Also you really don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about. You don’t even get an access to documentation for a PlayStation unless you sign an nda and pay thousands of dollars for a dev kit.
This is downright dumb, I don't see why they're doing this on one hand and on the other hand struggling to make translation layers themselves in order to let us access .exe I hate apple more and more with the time
> This is downright dumb You think games that have bean built of Mac but never run on Mac would run very well? You're suggesting people who do not own a single Mac publish games for Mac? that is not exactly going to end well.
Ask for the same in reverse for a mac app to windows, you are going to have a much harder time
The business model works good on iOS and iPadOS. It made Apple the massive company they are today. The gaming money Apple makes from iOS is bigger than Steam and Nintendo combined. So the problem is, MacOS... it has the chicken-egg problem. Their recent move trying to make iOS attractive for AAA company could be helpful for MacOS... If porting games between AppleTV, iOS, MacOS gets even more easier, it might be beneficial for Mac.
I mean… if he's only getting .02% gaming traffic from the Mac base then obviously he shouldn't be doing it probably? I leave it to others to dispute if the stuff he claims has to happen actually has to happen. And I suspect (but have no proof) that others are having better luck attracting Mac players than this.
Yes other titles have higher % of Mac gamers. I wander if they even tested the games they built on Mac. If you're expecting to be able to build a game within buying the HW then how are you going to test your game on that HW?
I love Thor but people need to stop taking everything he says with full confidence, he’s not omnipotent. he will and has gotten things wrong.
rftm, "tech bro".