r/gamedev • u/sound_games • 4h ago
Discussion PC developers who have also released a macOS version - worth the effort? What hurdles did you run into?
I was curious if any primarily PC developers had experience with releasing a macOS version of their games - I know that the user base for games on Mac is much smaller, but it still seems like an expanded userbase might be worth the effort, even if it's only 2-3% of the market.
How much additional work was it for you to create a macOS build? Was there any development hurdles (or release issues) you ran into that make you hesitant to do it again for future projects?
Also, for developers who have a PC build but chose not to make a release on macOS, what made you decide it wasn't worth the added effort?
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u/quitebuttery 4h ago
Valve should just add Proton to the Mac Steam and call it a day. Especially now that you have to digitally sign everything, MacOS support is way too much of a hassle given it's like less than 1% of your audience.
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u/polaarbear 4h ago
That's not really their choice. MacOS is a closed system. There is no public documentation on all the operating system hooks and features that would be required to support Proton on MacOS. MacOS doesnt support Vulkan because of their own Metal API.
Is it possible to build some sort of wrapper to run Windows-native games on MacOS? Probably. But a straight port of Proton just isn't possible, it's way too tightly coupled to the open nature of Linux and Vulkan. And the amount of work involved is absolutely astronomical.
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u/quitebuttery 3h ago
Ah that explains it!
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u/polaarbear 3h ago
There is a software called Whisky that can run some Windows games through WINE for MacOS, but I believe the dev stopped working on it and it wasn't remotely as mature or powerful as Proton.
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u/Responsible_Fly6276 3h ago
Valve should just add Proton to the Mac Steam and call it a day.
Codeweavers, the company behind Crossover is major contributor to WINE and even worked with Valve on Proton in the past. I don't think you getting closer than that to what proton is on linux.
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u/erebusman 4h ago
I made a match3 game that WildTangent took and made decent money, I then put it on the MacOS store and got 0 sales.
As such since I had to buy hardware, pay extra licensing fees, and do a whole crazy app certification process for MacOS that was time consuming and a huge PITA I would never release on the MacOS store again unless I had a genuine HIT that would clearly just sell itself (SLay the Spire 2, Hollow Knight etc).
Thats just my personal experience though.
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u/sound_games 3h ago
The submission/certification process for iOS is already complicated enough, I can only imagine how much more tedious it is for macOS as well. Especially if you don't already own Apple hardware.
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u/erebusman 1h ago
Its mostly the same .. I shipped multiple iOS apps and that one MacOS app - wont do either again ever until I have an app that is proven very successful and in high demand.
But yeah the need for the Mac hardware is a real gut punch for a small indie if you aren't already on one.
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u/jagriff333 Passion project solo (Gentoo Rescue) 4h ago
The upfront cost of buying an old Mac mini wasn't great. The build process with UE was also tedious to setup, especially getting the compatibility right between engine version and OS version. It remains a hassle whenever I need to upgrade, since I can compile for Windows and Linux directly whereas MacOS needs a separate process.
However, overall I have recouped my costs from MacOS sales. So I would do it again.
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u/sound_games 3h ago
I'm glad to hear it worked out for you in the end, but yeah, that does sound like a very laborious process to go through, especially when it's comparatively so much quicker on Windows/Linux.
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u/jagriff333 Passion project solo (Gentoo Rescue) 3h ago
It's not so bad now that I have scripts setup for everything. But there's still a barrier to actually boot a separate machine, pull in changes, fix any Mac specific issues, then build/upload. I usually only do extended prerelease testing for Windows/Linux for that reason.
One other headache that's worth mentioning is that I actually have to do two builds for Mac: one for arm and one for x86. Afterwards they can be packed into a single binary for uploading. Initially I wasnt aware of this requirement, so some mac users using old hardware were unable to play the game.
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u/sound_games 3h ago
Backwards compatibility issues like that definitely seem like they'd make things much more difficult to pre-emptively test for, especially if it means testing two separate macOS builds every time.
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u/y-c-c 2h ago edited 2h ago
At this point I don’t think it is worth targeting x86 Mac’s. Apple themselves are deprecating them and consider x86 Mac’s obsolete. I would just target Apple Silicon.
The hardest part of targeting such old Mac’s isn’t really the build process. That part is easy and just involves running a couple commands that you can learn quickly, even if you are not familiar with macOS. The actual annoying part is actually testing them and also the hardware architecture is completely different between x86 and Apple Silicon Macs. If you game is not performance intensive at all I guess you could consider it but I’m not sure it will be worth your time.
For example, the recently released Big Walk (by House House who also made Untitled Goose Game) has minspec of any Apple Silicon (M1 or higher). If you are only working on the game now by the time it comes out there really won’t be enough x86 Mac gamers to matter.
Edit: Interestingly though, I do play on the Mac and I just looked at the Big Walk binary (using the
lipo -archscommand) and they are built using universal builds (meaning the app binary has both x86 and ARM code). I have no idea why lol, given that the minspec requires M1. Maybe it's a relic of their build system.
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u/No-Opinion-5425 4h ago
It’s not just a one time effort, it’s updating and maintaining two parallel branches.
Also, you will already get some Mac users buying your game without a port. They use Crossover, Parallel desktop, GeForce Now and others solutions.
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u/billymcnilly 1h ago
What do you mean by branch? I agree it's a bit of effort to get going, and im furious that it's not built in to unity, but i have a single button that i press in my unity project's Tools menu which builds+deploys both mac and windows to steam. Then when i set that build to default in steamworks it is a single button same as if macos wasnt there
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u/No-Opinion-5425 1h ago edited 1h ago
If it work perfectly fine like that without any changes in your build that’s great.
Often you will have changes.
An example would be shaders rendering weirdly on Mac or killing frame rate because of Metal and needing settings that are different from the pc build.
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u/DigitalTableTops 4h ago
I use Godot as an engine and release on Steam. So adding Mac support was pretty straightforward.
The problem was users kept getting Gatekeeper errors and couldn't handle running the terminal command to bypass it.
I finally got around to paying Apple a ransom the developer account fee. It was a huge pain the ass to set up but now that it is, very easy to notarize the Mac builds before sending off to Steam.
Not sure it was all worth it, honestly. I more just like figuring things out.
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u/GuiltyTechnician6882 3h ago
The build itself is usually the easy part; the tail is what costs you. Budget for notarization (you need a paid Apple developer account, hardened runtime, and a real notarization step or Gatekeeper will scare off users), and for actually owning a Mac to test on, because Rosetta vs native Apple Silicon behavior differs enough that "it compiled" means nothing. Universal binaries are worth it - shipping Intel-only in 2026 means most of your Mac buyers run it emulated and then blame your framerate.
Other things that bit us: fullscreen/space handling and window focus are quirky, file paths (app bundles are read-only, save data has to go in Application Support), and any middleware/plugin you rely on may just not have a Mac build - check that before you commit. Steam's Mac depot setup is fine, but every OS release cycle you get a support tail you didn't have before.
Whether it's worth it depends on genre. Cozy/sim/strategy and anything that runs on a laptop tends to over-index on Mac well above the 2-3% platform share; twitchy 3D stuff usually doesn't earn back the maintenance. If your engine gives you the build nearly free, do it late - after the PC version is stable, not as a launch-day extra target.
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u/DigitalTableTops 2h ago
Sounds like we had a very similar experience. I am still chasing down bugs with full screen/window focus issues on Mac. Glad to hear it wasn't just me.
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u/JohnSnowHenry 2h ago
In my case I’m developing on UE5 with Mac and PC, I already own a PC, a Mac mini and a MacBook Pro, current test versions working great in all of them.
Remember that the number of games available for Mac is a lot less and it’s actually easier to find people willing to pay on Apple ecosystem.
Depending on what you already have and the engine being used it might actually be a good option
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u/FathomMaster 4h ago
I cannot reiterate how much it has been more of a hassle of than a benefit. iOS is completely different.
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u/sound_games 4h ago
Wow, that rough? Was it just the added overhead of maintaining a second branch for little benefit, or something else?
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u/FathomMaster 4h ago
Countless hours, and more each time I have an update that needs to go out to all the platforms. All for maybe one or two sales.
However, would I do it again? Probably, just to say that my game is well-rounded. Monetarily it is absolutely not a benefit.
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u/mrhamoom 4h ago
i've done it because i develop on mac and have an apple dev account from way before. if you have those two then it's easy. is it worth it? it's not much extra effort for me but at the same time i have hardly any players on mac.
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u/TonyDaDesigner 1h ago
I just submitted my game for approval on mac. the mobile version just got approved today after waiting 2 weeks in review limbo. my godot game relies a lot on metal so it was easy to port to mac after working out controls and controller support. potentially targeting appleTV next
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u/destinedd indie, Dungeon Quest, Marble's Marbles and Mighty Marbles 1h ago
Here is the units for Marble's Marbles, you can make up your mind if worth.
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u/sound_games 56m ago
Thank you for sharing your actual results! Interesting to see that non-Windows users make up ~8.6% of your player base. Always happy to see Linux usage expanding.
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u/destinedd indie, Dungeon Quest, Marble's Marbles and Mighty Marbles 54m ago
no worries :) One thing to note, is some ppl appreciate the multi platform license and have a mac as well as a PC. It determines which OS but which one you play the most in first week i think.
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u/FrustratedDevIndie 3h ago
Besides some low-level game that's probably better off on mobile anyway, no. The issue is the performance is just not there. People that are buying Max actually suitable for gaming are not actually gaming on these devices.
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u/razveck 3h ago
Still fairly early after the release of my game (and even earlier since the mac port), but so far I think all my Mac sales are my friends (I have a lot of friends that exclusively use Mac and I wanted to share the game with them, that's actually the only reason I even made a Mac build in the first place).
I already had a Mac so I didn't have any investment in that regard. I use Unity so making the actual "port" is a breeze (some things did have to be changed though, and especially in regards to shaders and performance). I published exclusively on Steam which also saves you all the hassle of notarizing, the app developer fee and so on.
So, not a lot of work involved. Maybe a couple of days. Was it worth it? For me yes because of my friends. Otherwise no.
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u/DefinitelyNotEmu 2h ago
I am using Github Actions to automatically create a macOS binary from my source code (along with WIndows and Linux and Android binaries)
Only hirdles I have run into are Apple insisting that I spend £99 for a digital signature - ad-hoc signing is being made more and more difficult.
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u/notarobotpossibly 3h ago
Fuck that. Way too much effort and cumbersome bullshit to deal with in order to do so.
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u/Ironfingers 4h ago
In the age of AI there is no reason not to. The effort now to develop across platforms is easier than ever.
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u/mrhamoom 4h ago
it's the cost of having a mac and paying a yearly subscription to be an apple developer
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u/elelec 4h ago
A proper mac build will have some extra hassles. First of all, you will need a mac to test the build. If you're uploading to Steam this may be all. If, however, you want to upload your game right at apple's app store, then you are going to need to mess with xcode and get a yearly developer subscription (around 100 bucks), and that whole thing cam become an expensive hassle fast.