I just ran a search in this category for “Mac version” and didn’t find a post asking for a Mac version of Gems of War. Apologies if I missed one. With that said, please add a Mac version of the game! I can play on my iPad, but I’d much rather play on my Mac.
If you would like to see a Mac version of GoW, please add your +1. If you want to start an argument about Mac vs. Windows, please start your own thread, preferably on a website no one will ever see.
To the devs: we love the game, keep up the good work!
It’s about the third time it’s been asked, let me go over the ins, outs, and why it’s probably not happening and why you should celebrate that.
It’s a Unity game. In theory that means it should run on anything, including Nintendo Switch. I’m not super familiar with Unity, but I’ve done a lot of work in “it works cross-platform!” frameworks and let me tell you something: it’s never that easy. You still end up having to write a handful of little tweaks here and there.
That means you have to thoroughly test on every platform you target. Gems of War already targets: iOS, Android, PC, XBox, PS4. Adding Mac means they have to work a little harder to test every iteration.
Speaking frankly, it’s very clear the current GoW QA process is severely overloaded. Adding a MacOS release is only going to add to this, because it will be one more thing that never gets tested. Maybe in the future, when they aren’t being pushed forward on a death march by their publisher, but there’s no telling when that might happen.
You are mixing things up a little bit. I don’t blame you, because there are probably contexts where we can say “Steam is a platform” and it’s true. But in this case, it’s not, and we need analogy for this. Programmers love analogy.
Unity is a framework for making cross-platform games. In this sense, a “platform” is iOS, Android, Windows, MacOS, Linux distros, and the various consoles. Gems of War has been developed to target some, but not all, of these platforms. Gems of War is a game made with the Unity engine, and this is what determines what platforms it can run on.
Steam is a cross-platform video game store. It sells Gems of War. But there’s nothing Steam can do to make Gems of War run on a Mac.
It’s like Steam is Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart sells games for PS4 and XBox One. That doesn’t mean you’re going to play Final Fantasy XV on XBox One. It’s a platform-exclusive, being sold by a store that isn’t platform-exclusive.
So, to, does Steam sell many games that don’t target all platforms, or that target platforms Steam itself can’t support. Gems of War is distributed on PC by Steam, but that has little to do with whether it can or will support Mac.
There are some games that use this sort of setup, which is called “cloud gaming.” However, it’s still in its infancy, and despite the promise that the cloud holds for gaming, this approach has many severe drawbacks that limit its broad adoption. Gems of War is almost entirely a client-run game, connecting to the server only occasionally (including but not limited to login, accessing the store/leaderboard, chat, and before and after a match). Notably, the entirety of any given match runs entirely locally, including rendering, input, and game logic. The game is written in a managed language (likely C#) that allows for both rapid development and device independence, but as @Slypenslyde indicates, “platform-independent” covers only about 80% of the work and is a far cry from “free.” Unity itself has different quirks and bugs on each platform.
You can sort of simulate “cloud gaming” with GoW. You just need to own a Windows computer. Then you remote desktop to it from the Mac, and start playing GoW on the Windows computer.
Why would anyone think Mac users would be small? I used to own a PC and just switched to Mac due to my iphone. <3 Apple. This is a trend. Get on it now rather than after it’s too late.
I agree. However, I found a way to play on my mac by downloading an app called bluestacks which puts google playstore on your mac, and opens up as if it were on a tablet; from within bluestacks, I have GoW Dl’d. Sux I had to do this to play my game on my mac, but at least I found a way. I love GoW!! ~FrankiiFame
One of our guild members is no longer able to play on his Mac due to a recent update no longer being compatible with blue stacks. Does anyone have a work around for this since clearly GoW on Mac isn’t going to happen even through steam?
