Psyonix giving up on macOS support for 'Rocket League' in March
The developer behind the popular multiplayer game "Rocket League" is ending support for macOS in March, forcing players to either switch to Windows or continue playing the game without any of its online functionality.
Psyonix, the development studio owned by Epic, advised it is "no longer viable" to maintain support for macOS and Linux-based versions of "Rocket League." In a blog post, the studio reasoned it was due to it continuing to upgrade the game with "new technologies," which puts a strain on developing the game for multiple platforms concurrently.
The studio warned will be issuing the last patch for the game on both platforms in March. The update will disable online functionality for the macOS and Linux versions, which will shut down social elements and online multiplayer features, including friends lists, in-game events, the item shop, leaderboards and rankings, and even core functionality like online matchmaking and private matches.
Despite the disabled functions, the game will still be playable on Mac, with features including local multiplayer, split-screen play, career statistics, and replays. Access to the garage and inventory will continue, complete with existing items previously acquired in the game, while Steam Workshop maps and custom training packs will also work, so long as they were downloaded before the final patch.
Psyonix does suggest Mac-based players can play the game on Windows via Boot Camp, though it is "not something Psyonix officially supports." Similar tools are also suggested for Linux, namely the use of Steam's Proton app or Wine, but again neither are officially supported.
Due to the multi-platform nature of Steam, players who do switch operating systems will still be able to play the game on their existing Steam accounts without needing to rebuy the game itself. Progress and game items previously acquired on a Steam account will migrate to wherever the user is playing.
Psyonix, the development studio owned by Epic, advised it is "no longer viable" to maintain support for macOS and Linux-based versions of "Rocket League." In a blog post, the studio reasoned it was due to it continuing to upgrade the game with "new technologies," which puts a strain on developing the game for multiple platforms concurrently.
The studio warned will be issuing the last patch for the game on both platforms in March. The update will disable online functionality for the macOS and Linux versions, which will shut down social elements and online multiplayer features, including friends lists, in-game events, the item shop, leaderboards and rankings, and even core functionality like online matchmaking and private matches.
Despite the disabled functions, the game will still be playable on Mac, with features including local multiplayer, split-screen play, career statistics, and replays. Access to the garage and inventory will continue, complete with existing items previously acquired in the game, while Steam Workshop maps and custom training packs will also work, so long as they were downloaded before the final patch.
Psyonix does suggest Mac-based players can play the game on Windows via Boot Camp, though it is "not something Psyonix officially supports." Similar tools are also suggested for Linux, namely the use of Steam's Proton app or Wine, but again neither are officially supported.
Due to the multi-platform nature of Steam, players who do switch operating systems will still be able to play the game on their existing Steam accounts without needing to rebuy the game itself. Progress and game items previously acquired on a Steam account will migrate to wherever the user is playing.
Comments
I've been using it for a few years now and it's allowed me to play many windows only games without any hassles at all on my Macs, even on some of my older Macs that don't have a powerful GPU, since we're talking about streaming here. All you need is a good and fast connection, and who doesn't have that these days?
I don't even need to install the games, I just need to own them in the cloud.
I've been gaming on Macs for decades and in my experience, there has never been a better time for Mac gaming than right now, due to many more options (bootcamp, streaming etc.) being available for Mac users to access games running on various platforms, giving them easy and quick access to vastly more games than what was possible before.
Sometimes I'll even buy a Windows only game if it's a game that I really want. I do not have Windows installed on any of my drives and never will, and I can play the games just fine on my Macs.
iOS rules!
I've actually been gaming more on my iPad Pro these past few years than on my Macs. iOS is the premiere mobile gaming platform, with the best games, the most exclusives and running on the best and most powerful hardware.
https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/2019/09/sorry-mac-users-apple-doesnt-care-about-us-devs/
Lying troll. This is a small team that simply can't manage to support the game on so many platforms. It's also dropping it on Linux. Understandable.
In reality both you and the guy that you presumably are responding to are both wrong. Instead what is actually going on is that Psyonix, the original developer of Rocket League made multi-platform and cross-platform play a priority. A major part of accomplishing this was primarily making the game for Steam, because:
A. Steam runs on Windows, macOS and Linux and
B. porting Steam games to other platforms like Android, iOS and even XBox - which is at its core Windows 10 anyway - isn't that difficult.
Which meant that apart from Steam getting/maintaining it on PlayStation - accomplished at launch - and Nintendo were the only "big jobs" and even there PlayStation is based on BSD - like macOS - and the Nintendo Switch is a lot more similar to Android than Nintendo will ever admit.
The current problem: Psyonix was bought by Epic Games. And Epic Games considers Steam their #1 competitor. So rather than saying "Rocket League will no longer be supported on Linux and Mac" it is more accurate to say "Epic Games is beginning the process of migrating Rocket League from Steam to its own Epic store and during the transition they will only support the Steam version of the game on Windows." Epic Games will not/cannot publicly admit this for a host of reasons but it is what is happening.
When the transition is complete, those who own the game on Steam will need to re-download the game from Epic. This will be true of both Windows and Mac, and at that time the game will be fully supported on Mac.
As far as "the future" ... TBH it will be true multi-platform cloud gaming that will make hardware irrelevant. This model is very much in the interests of the gaming industry. Developing, patching, updating, patching etc. games for one platform is expensive and difficult to the point where a game on one platform is literally entirely different from allegedly the same game on another because the hardware specs are so different and sometimes they were developed by entirely different teams. Yet if you only release a desirable game for one platform - or merely release it first and/or better - the gamers on the other platforms will hate you forever. This nonsense actually has caused gaming companies to fail. The only people who will not benefit from this are the console makers. And even that is only to a degree. If Microsoft makes money selling 5 million XBox consoles a year, it isn't much. Sony would take a bigger hit from no longer pushing 15-20 million PlayStations a year, but they'd still be Sony. The only big loser is Nintendo, as they're the only one where video games is any more than a side business. However, there are those who think that Nintendo would make more money were the billions of owners of Android, iOS/macOS and Windows devices to be able to play Smash Bros and Super Mario Odyssey instead of merely the < 45 million people who own the Nintendo Switch. Sega was able to have nearly $3 billion in revenue even in a down year last year due to not releasing major games (Shenmue, Sakura Wars ... and Super Monkey Ball) so Nintendo ought to be be able to outdo that easily.