alt Hacker NewsThat's the problem I think: porting.
As I understand things, proton allows windows games to just work (pun intended) on Linux. No porting, no rebuild - just download and run.
Who is going to bother doing all the extra work to port their game for Mac?! Time and time again there have been loads of articles on here over the years with developers saying it is simply not worth the hassle to support Linux and Mac.
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Despite the name, the GPTK isn't just a porting toolkit. It contains a version of Wine that is specifically patched to pass DirectX calls to Metal.
There is a relatively easy way for a player to use GPTK to run games from their Steam library on Mac.
Here is how to use Apple's Game Porting Toolkit to install Wine & Steam.
1. Go to https://github.com/installaware/AGPT and download & run the installer
2. Go to https://store.steampowered.com/about/ and download the installer
3. Open a Terminal, run mkdir Games && gameportingtoolkit ~/Games Downloads/SteamSetup.exe
4. Follow the instructions at https://www.applegamingwiki.com/wiki/Game_Porting_Toolkit#Sh...
The same folks that bother for iOS and iPad games, Nintendo Switch and PlayStation.
Most studios aren't religious about APIs like FOSS developers, they create API agnostic engines with plugabble backends and move on with what is relevant for their game IP.
It has been like this since the dawn of computer games being fully written in Assembly across 8 bit snowflakes.
>Who is going to bother doing all the extra work to port their game for Mac?!
So far at least Ubisoft, CAPCOM, Remedy, Kojima Productions and Hello Games.
The downside of relying on translation layers rather than porting from the perspective of Apple is likely that they vey much detest the lack of control that would result from that. Game devs targeting Linux have started viewing Proton/Windows runtime as a target, which has lead to native Linux ports becoming less common. As a person wanting to play the odd game on Linux, this has been a godsend, but for Apple, this would be viewed as an existential threat.
Personally, I'd wish for more extensive Vulkan support, but I have been informed that this is likely not as easily done considering Apples GPUs with TBDR differ somewhat from the industry standard.
At the end though, if Apple truly wanted, they could simply spent money on studios and incentives ports. None-Mobile-Gaming remains no priority for them, simple as that. I haven't seen any indication that the AVP has changed that in any way and I wouldn't be surprised if they view GoDot not as a game engine, but rather another way to create experiences.