Aspyr ends 32-bit Mac game sales in shift to 64-bit support only

AppleInsiderAppleInsider
Posted:
in macOS edited June 2019
Game publisher Aspyr is ceasing sale of its 32-bit Mac game catalog on Tuesday, with Monday being the last day the company is offering the titles for purchase, citing Apple's shift of macOS to 64-bit and end of support for 32-bit as the reason for the change.



'Civilization IV,' a previous version from the series, is one of the 32-bit games Aspyr will cease selling as of Tuesday

Apple has warned for some time that it was discontinuing support for 32-bit applications in macOS, with the recently-revealed macOS Catalina 10.15 being the first version of the operating system to work with just 64-bit apps. High Sierra was the last to support 32-bit apps fully, while the current macOS Mojave will be the last to support 32-bit applications at all.

Due to the change, Aspyr has confirmed it too is ending support for 32-bit applications for future operating systems. From Tuesday onwards, Aspyr's remaining 32-bit Mac library will become 64-bit or receive a 64-bit update by September, in time for macOS Catalina's public release.

"Once Apple announced it was discontinuing support for 32-bit titles, we decided ending sales for those games was the right thing to do, and well before Apple's support ends later this year," said Aspyr vice president of publishing Elizabeth Howard. "Giving players fun, innovative games across all platforms is our focus, and we have some exciting new projects that we will reveal very soon."

The company has published a complete list of 32-bit games that will be removed in its support pages. Its complete game library is 190 games in size, with many already 64-bit compatible or will be in the future.

The lis of games being removed includes "Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel," five "Call of Duty" titles, "Civilization IV" and "Colonization," "Duke Nukem Forever," four "Star Wars" games, and a selection of others.

Aspyr advises players can continue to enjoy the 32-bit titles if they don't upgrade to macOS Catalina, while those who use Steam can take advantage of SteamPlay to play their games on other platforms that do support 32-bit software.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 32
    crowleycrowley Posts: 10,453member
    Pretty sure that's Civilization VI in the picture, not IV.
    StrangeDays
  • Reply 2 of 32
    uraharaurahara Posts: 733member
    So it is a lie of Duke Nukem FOREVER  :D
    tyler82chasmjeffharris
  • Reply 3 of 32
    Mike WuertheleMike Wuerthele Posts: 6,861administrator
    crowley said:
    Pretty sure that's Civilization VI in the picture, not IV.
    It was. The staffer responsible for the error has been appropriately flogged.
    Wgkruegerentropysdocno42vulpinechasmwatto_cobra
  • Reply 4 of 32
    blastdoorblastdoor Posts: 3,276member
    Ack. 

    For the most part, I think Apple is right to purge old software in order to advance the platform. But there are some old games that are painful to lose. Is it possible to run older versions of OSX in a virtual machine in order to play these classics? Or would one be forced to run an older version of Windows in a VM to play the classics? 
    jbdragonjeffharrisFileMakerFellerwatto_cobra
  • Reply 5 of 32
    hammeroftruthhammeroftruth Posts: 1,309member
    blastdoor said:
    Ack. 

    For the most part, I think Apple is right to purge old software in order to advance the platform. But there are some old games that are painful to lose. Is it possible to run older versions of OSX in a virtual machine in order to play these classics? Or would one be forced to run an older version of Windows in a VM to play the classics? 
    I feel your pain. Just cleaned out all of my legacy Mac software and bemoaned getting rid of my Bungie games.
    FileMakerFellerwatto_cobra
  • Reply 6 of 32
    jbdragonjbdragon Posts: 2,311member
    blastdoor said:
    Ack. 

    For the most part, I think Apple is right to purge old software in order to advance the platform. But there are some old games that are painful to lose. Is it possible to run older versions of OSX in a virtual machine in order to play these classics? Or would one be forced to run an older version of Windows in a VM to play the classics? 
    I have my iOS 32-bit app in a drawer in case they get updated and I can move them out. I few have, but many haven't and I do miss playing them. Every once in a while I'll run through them and see if any of them start up, as in been updated. None have for quite a while now. I'm getting close to the point of just deleting them all.
  • Reply 7 of 32
    nasseraenasserae Posts: 3,167member
    I am surprised Command and Conquer is not on that list. The last time that game was update was 3 years ago.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 8 of 32
    randominternetpersonrandominternetperson Posts: 3,089member
    Wouldn't the "right thing to do" be to update the apps so they are 64-bit compatible rather than simple stopping their sale?  It's a shame they didn't see the writing on the wall years ago and come up with a migration strategy.  
    StrangeDaysrazorpitJWSCtyler82jeffharrisargonautwatto_cobra
  • Reply 9 of 32
    mystigomystigo Posts: 183member
    Not a game per se, but by far the most painful thing for me is losing Photoshop 5.5 which was the last version you could buy a perpetual license for (please correct me if I am wrong about that). If I upgrade to Catalina, I would need to subscribe, and the cost to do so is beyond prohibitive for what I use it for.
  • Reply 10 of 32
    mknelsonmknelson Posts: 1,124member
    blastdoor said:
    Ack. 

    For the most part, I think Apple is right to purge old software in order to advance the platform. But there are some old games that are painful to lose. Is it possible to run older versions of OSX in a virtual machine in order to play these classics? Or would one be forced to run an older version of Windows in a VM to play the classics? 
    VM OSX? Not easily unless things have changed - most of the VM manufacturers prevented that unless you were using a server version.

    You could always set up an older OS partition and dual boot as long as your Mac supports that OS.

    Mystigo: CS6 was the last version on perpetual license.
    edited June 2019 jeffharrischasmargonautwatto_cobra
  • Reply 11 of 32
    razorpitrazorpit Posts: 1,796member
    Isn't this just a matter of re-compiling to 64-bit?
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 12 of 32
    JMStearnsX2JMStearnsX2 Posts: 86member
    mknelson said:
    blastdoor said:
    Ack. 

    For the most part, I think Apple is right to purge old software in order to advance the platform. But there are some old games that are painful to lose. Is it possible to run older versions of OSX in a virtual machine in order to play these classics? Or would one be forced to run an older version of Windows in a VM to play the classics? 
    VM OSX? Not easily unless things have changed - most of the VM manufacturers prevented that unless you were using a server version.

    You could always set up an older OS partition and dual boot as long as your Mac supports that OS.

    Mystigo: CS6 was the last version on perpetual license.
    mknelson said:
    blastdoor said:
    Ack. 

    For the most part, I think Apple is right to purge old software in order to advance the platform. But there are some old games that are painful to lose. Is it possible to run older versions of OSX in a virtual machine in order to play these classics? Or would one be forced to run an older version of Windows in a VM to play the classics? 
    VM OSX? Not easily unless things have changed - most of the VM manufacturers prevented that unless you were using a server version.

    You could always set up an older OS partition and dual boot as long as your Mac supports that OS.

    Mystigo: CS6 was the last version on perpetual license.
    All versions of Mac OS X availiable on the App Store (Lion and later) work just fine using Parallels. I have a VM of everyone of them on an external HD.
    roundaboutnowFileMakerFellerargonaut
  • Reply 13 of 32
    mystigomystigo Posts: 183member
    I just took a look. Photoshop CS5.5 says it is 64 bits in the system report. I note that it "requires QuickTime", which is being pulled out of Catalina. Hopefully it is not a hard requirement.

    I wouldn't mind getting the CS6 version. If it works.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 14 of 32
    socaltrojandudesocaltrojandude Posts: 13member
    blastdoor said:
    Is it possible to run older versions of OSX in a virtual machine in order to play these classics? Or would one be forced to run an older version of Windows in a VM to play the classics? 
    I have looked into this extensively and messed around with every emulator I could find.

    At this point you would think someone would have come up with a way to run an emulator of OSX Snow Leopard within the current OSX Mojave. Virtual Box and Sheep Shaver come close but its such a convoluted process to get things installed and then to get software to run inside the emulator seems impossible.

    All I want is to be able to play my favorite game ever, Civilization III (I know, I'm lame! but this game has been my guilty pleasure for years)

    I hope by some chance Aspyr releases a new 64-bit version of this but I won't hold my breath. For now I guess my only choice is to use a partition or just keep an old Mac running Snow Leopard just for this purpose.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 15 of 32
    jdiamondjdiamond Posts: 124member
    blastdoor said:
    Ack. 

    For the most part, I think Apple is right to purge old software in order to advance the platform. But there are some old games that are painful to lose. Is it possible to run older versions of OSX in a virtual machine in order to play these classics? Or would one be forced to run an older version of Windows in a VM to play the classics? 
    I tried to play old games in a Virtual Machine running High Sierra and it was a complete no go.  Either for technical or political reasons, emulators like VMWare Fusion and Parallels cannot provide 3D acceleration for MacOS, but the issue is there's no software 3D emulation layer, so any app that makes any kind of 3D call (all of mine) simply exits with an error in the emulator.  Seems like the best you can do is have a dual boot into an old MacOS version, and that's only if you have Mac hardware old enough to support it.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 16 of 32
    JWSCJWSC Posts: 1,203member
    Mike Wuerthele said:
    crowley said:
    Pretty sure that's Civilization VI in the picture, not IV.
    It was. The staffer responsible for the error has been appropriately flogged.
    Is that image really from Civilization VI?  I play it all the time and while the image looks similar, it is not what I see when I play.
  • Reply 17 of 32
    tyler82tyler82 Posts: 1,101member
    Just run Windows bare metal on Boot Camp to play your games. Don't bother with VMs. The only OSes that run well on VMs are those that are not graphic intensive like Linux. The nice thing about Steam is that you can purchase the game once and run it on Windows or Mac.
    macpluspluswatto_cobra
  • Reply 18 of 32
    Mike WuertheleMike Wuerthele Posts: 6,861administrator
    JWSC said:
    Mike Wuerthele said:
    crowley said:
    Pretty sure that's Civilization VI in the picture, not IV.
    It was. The staffer responsible for the error has been appropriately flogged.
    Is that image really from Civilization VI?  I play it all the time and while the image looks similar, it is not what I see when I play.
    The present image is from Civ IV.
    tyler82
  • Reply 19 of 32
    ajmasajmas Posts: 600member
    razorpit said:
    Isn't this just a matter of re-compiling to 64-bit?
    Not always. For example, if there were any assumptions made about the size of an integer, for example that can break things or an assumption was made on how an external function does things, but that function has its own bugs revealed with the change in bitness.

    Some other are indicated here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9728250/migrating-from-32-to-64-bit-releases
    1STnTENDERBITStyler82razorpit
  • Reply 20 of 32
    1STnTENDERBITS1STnTENDERBITS Posts: 460member
    randominternetperson said:
    Wouldn't the "right thing to do" be to update the apps so they are 64-bit compatible rather than simple stopping their sale?  It's a shame they didn't see the writing on the wall years ago and come up with a migration strategy.  
    Aspyr isn't a large dev house.  They're a small house that primarily caters to Mac and Linux, so you can imagine their revenue isn't comparable to a primary PC dev house.  The work to convert  and QA 32 bit to 64 bit isn't trivial and requires dedicated man hours.  They have to weigh potential future sales against the work required to garner those sales.  They are only going to put in the work if the potential sales are there. There aren't that many games being deprecated and I'd be the sales don't warrant the work required to upgrade the games.  
    docno42chasm
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