Prolific indie game porter won't develop for macOS anymore

AppleInsider

A developer responsible for a wide array of Indie game ports has soured on Apple's migrations to Apple Silicon and Metal, and is walking away from macOS development -- but plans to continue to support his current catalog for as long as possible.

"Superliminal" is one of the many games Lee has ported to macOS

Ethan Lee, also known as Flibitijibibo, began porting games nearly a decade ago when he took a summer job doing audio programming for a game called "Waveform." The game was available on Windows, but not his preferred platform: Linux. When he told the developers that he wanted to make a Linux port on the side, they suggested he could make a Mac version.

Shortly after, when Valve announced Steam for Linux, Humble contacted Lee, asking him to make Humble Bundle ports.

"A whole business [was] born," Lee writes in his post. "Accidentally."

Lee's portfolio includes a number of both lesser and well-known indie games, including titles such as:

• Waveform


• Super Hexagon


• Celeste


• Escape Goat 1 & 2


• Rogue Legacy


• Bastion


• VVVVVV


• Superliminal


• River City Ransom: Underground


• Gratuitous Space Battles 2


• They Bleed Pixels


• Atom Zombie Smasher


• SHENZHEN I/O


• Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator

Unfortunately, while that worked well for him at the time, Apple's shift in recent years has made it somewhat more challenging for him to port games to macOS. He notes that his "trusty flibit MacBook" -- an original MacBook running macOS Mojave -- is at the end of its lifespan, and he doesn't plan on buying any more Apple products. Additionally, he talks a bit about the frustration he feels over M1 and Metal.

For these reasons, starting in 2021, Lee is walking away from making new ports for Mac. He will continue supporting existing ports.

"I will continue to support my current Mac games for as long as I physically can. You bought a Mac version, you're keeping that Mac version," he writes. "You gave me your money and have treated me very well this past decade, this house I'm working in wouldn't be my home without both Linux and Mac customers, you deserve at least some of my attention based on that alone."

He points out that he feels as though Apple is getting "bigger and more reclusive" while developers of Indie games get "smaller and more desperate," which has soured him on Apple as a company.

He goes on to thank Mac users, noting that they've been extraordinarily good to him. He finishes the post by slamming Apple for its interest in both the Apple Card and Apple Fitness+..

goodbyeranch

TLDR Someone doesn't think its worth it to replace his old laptop or learn new tech to support a tiny sliver of a microscopic partcile of a market.

crowley

That sucks, some good games in that list.  

omasou

Perhaps he should port Linux to Apple Silicon and maybe the world will be right again

xyzzy01

goodbyeranch said:

TLDR Someone doesn't think its worth it to replace his old laptop or learn new tech to support a tiny sliver of a microscopic partcile of a market.

While the first part - not replacing his laptop - sounded strange, the second is an issue. As Apple has gotten bigger, they've moved away from open standards and created their own products. In this case, they've deprecated OpenGL (after not their version for a long time) and created their own graphics API - Metal. That makes porting much more work and less interesting - and as a long time Apple user, it's something I don't like too. It will make porting harder, maintenance harder and create more platform-specific bugs. It will also make less ports happen.

lkrupp

Since when have ‘ports’ to the Mac been worth a damn? Sounds to me like a lazy developer unwilling to stay up-to-date. I wonder what he plans to do when other platforms start migrating to in-house SoC’s? With the advent of Apple Silicon it seems inevitable this is the direction things are going.

But hey, it’s his company and he can do what he wants. I remember WAY BACK when Electronic Arts (AE) solemnly announced it was ceasing development of games for the Apple ][ platform. To this day they don’t produce games for macOS. And we all know how badly that has affected Apple. 

longfang

He doesn’t want to develop for Apple Silicon, fine. But why make such a big deal about not doing something. Very quixotic behavior. 

Fred257

Many programmers get burned out on learning new languages.  It’s understandable.  I know about 10, and they all complain about the changes.  The ones I know who are the most successful don’t complain about the challenge of learning new things.  They get excited about the possibilities of these changes.  They stay young.  This kid sounds like an old man who’s giving up on life.

dysamoria

goodbyeranch said:

TLDR Someone doesn't think its worth it to replace his old laptop or learn new tech to support a tiny sliver of a microscopic partcile of a market.

If Linux and Mac ports paid for a house, I’d think he was making a decent enough income. Jobs that allow people to afford houses aren’t easy to come by, especially this decade.

lkrupp

xyzzy01 said:

goodbyeranch said:

TLDR Someone doesn't think its worth it to replace his old laptop or learn new tech to support a tiny sliver of a microscopic partcile of a market.

While the first part - not replacing his laptop - sounded strange, the second is an issue. As Apple has gotten bigger, they've moved away from open standards and created their own products. In this case, they've deprecated OpenGL (after not their version for a long time) and created their own graphics API - Metal. That makes porting much more work and less interesting - and as a long time Apple user, it's something I don't like too. It will make porting harder, maintenance harder and create more platform-specific bugs. It will also make less ports happen.

So what you are advocating is that Apple cease being Apple and just become one of the also-rans? Nice. Since when has Apple ever in its long history just acquiesced to whatever the rest of the world was doing? They have always done their own thing and been supremely successful at it. Why do some continue to demand that Apple follow the crowd so that lazy developers can easily ‘port’ their garbage to the Mac?

dysamoria

xyzzy01 said:

goodbyeranch said:

TLDR Someone doesn't think its worth it to replace his old laptop or learn new tech to support a tiny sliver of a microscopic partcile of a market.

While the first part - not replacing his laptop - sounded strange, the second is an issue. As Apple has gotten bigger, they've moved away from open standards and created their own products. In this case, they've deprecated OpenGL (after not their version for a long time) and created their own graphics API - Metal. That makes porting much more work and less interesting - and as a long time Apple user, it's something I don't like too. It will make porting harder, maintenance harder and create more platform-specific bugs. It will also make less ports happen.

There’s a project to get OpenGL’s replacement Vulkan wrapped by/translated to Metal. It’s called Molten. It’s not yet complete (covering all of the Vulkan API), but it’s in progress.

https://moltengl.com/moltenvk/

As for Apple Silicon... I keep reading people saying that anything which compiles on Mac OS Intel is a quick conversion to Mac OS Apple Silicon. Is that not factual?

xbit

lkrupp said:

Since when have ‘ports’ to the Mac been worth a damn? Sounds to me like a lazy developer unwilling to stay up-to-date.

There’s no need to insult someone who’s done some stellar work in porting games to Mac over the years and who has vowed to continue supporting those games.

crowley

lkrupp said:

xyzzy01 said:

goodbyeranch said:

TLDR Someone doesn't think its worth it to replace his old laptop or learn new tech to support a tiny sliver of a microscopic partcile of a market.

While the first part - not replacing his laptop - sounded strange, the second is an issue. As Apple has gotten bigger, they've moved away from open standards and created their own products. In this case, they've deprecated OpenGL (after not their version for a long time) and created their own graphics API - Metal. That makes porting much more work and less interesting - and as a long time Apple user, it's something I don't like too. It will make porting harder, maintenance harder and create more platform-specific bugs. It will also make less ports happen.

So what you are advocating is that Apple cease being Apple and just become one of the also-rans? Nice. Since when has Apple ever in its long history just acquiesced to whatever the rest of the world was doing? They have always done their own thing and been supremely successful at it. Why do some continue to demand that Apple follow the crowd so that lazy developers can easily ‘port’ their garbage to the Mac?

Much as you might enjoy insulting people that you don't know, there's a difference between a developer being lazy and not seeing an opportunity benefit in developing or porting to the Mac.  And if they don't then the Mac is worse.  The games listed above are not garbage.

I don't understand why you care more about Apple the company than yourself as a customer of Apple.  The more good software available for the Mac then the better the customer experience.

elijahg

For a long time this kind of thing has been worrying me. I have some of the games on that list, and I hope it's not the start of a trend for games and other apps.

There is a disproportionately large number of games and cross platform apps available for macOS considering its market share, which is great news for us Mac users. But Apple doesn't make it easy to be an indie coder on macOS. They're so out of touch with the indie devs, and how common it is for indie devs to write apps as a secondary income to their main jobs. Apple just assumes devs have unlimited resources to follow their whims to the Next Big Thing™ and an expectation that devs will always follow along, they unfortunately seem to take them for granted - but in a lot of cases it was these very devs that stuck with Apple though its dark ages.

To name a few recent anti-developer Apple policies:

• Apple's regular deprecation of significant cross platform technologies (OpenGL)
• Their silence on deprecated technologies and APIs (little more than a warning that the "API is deprecated in <macOS version>")
• Announcement of something as the Next Big Thing (VR, external GPUs) and then silence on the subject, and eventual dropping of support.
• Onerous App Store rules with arbitrary application of those rules.

Also, and it's a big one - Apple's expectation that devs spend a disproportionate amount of time on Apple's proprietary APIs like Metal, for a platform whose marketshare is pretty tiny. With a lot of open source apps, engineering and games especially, OpenGL is key. Apple has always lagged far behind with OpenGL support, but a few macOS versions ago it was deprecated. OpenGL support makes supporting macOS little more than a tickbox. But the threat of OpenGL's removal resulting in a rewrite and subsequent maintenance of two graphics engine branches is simply untenable for most devs, so the result is macOS support is dropped. So ultimately Apple ends up harming Mac users, again.

Rayz2016

longfang said:

He doesn’t want to develop for Apple Silicon, fine. But why make such a big deal about not doing something. Very quixotic behavior. 

I think he's hinting that Apple should give him a new ASi Mac.

iadlib

Sounds like a cranky teenager. You can do your dev work on a kitted out Mac mini for not too much scratch. Plus learning to support this new architecture looks good on the resume but he’s butt hurt about nothing lmao. 

larryjw

We're talking about computer games here. Really? 

Who cares?

albatrossflyer

Sounds like he's done the analysis and there isn't a business case to be made porting apps to MacOS/Metal.  All in all a reasonable conclusion...

cloudguy

lkrupp said:

Since when have ‘ports’ to the Mac been worth a damn? Sounds to me like a lazy developer unwilling to stay up-to-date. I wonder what he plans to do when other platforms start migrating to in-house SoC’s? With the advent of Apple Silicon it seems inevitable this is the direction things are going.

But hey, it’s his company and he can do what he wants. I remember WAY BACK when Electronic Arts (AE) solemnly announced it was ceasing development of games for the Apple ][ platform. To this day they don’t produce games for macOS. And we all know how badly that has affected Apple. 

Not a lazy developer. Instead a one person shop who doesn't have the time to learn a new platform in return for minimal financial return. You create a Patreon and contribute a significant chunk of your own money before calling him lazy. And please note his explanation that plenty of indie developers are experiencing the same.

dyonoctis

If you read his full post, he's saying that developping for MacOs isn't as easy as it sounds, Apple support seems to prioritize big developers, while ignoring smaller dev, so when you have a problem, you're all alone to try and fix it.

"Could I have learned my way around modern macOS and tried to preserve that part of the company? I dunno, maybe eventually. These past few years have spawned an absurd amount of new technologies, many of them absurdly complex - Vulkan alone has been a multi-year learning process and I still barely understand a large portion of the spec. But in Vulkan's case, I wanted to learn to use it. Metal may be nicer to look at in comparison, but beauty is only skin-deep - any multiplatform developer will tell you that Mac drivers still haven't improved despite Metal happening, and reporting bugs to Apple when you're not rich is like pulling teeth with boxing gloves. Contrast that with Linux, where Vulkan is in some places downright appalling, but when we run into driver problems I just post a RenderDoc capture on the Mesa issue tracker and get a response (and sometimes even a commit hash!) usually on the same day." 

cloudguy

omasou said:

Perhaps he should port Linux to Apple Silicon and maybe the world will be right again

I hope you were being facetious. While this would be a convoluted way to turn an M1 Mac Mini into a Linux development workstation for his Linux games, it wouldn't do a thing for the entirely different stack on macOS.