Why are there both PC and Mac licenses?

I love XIV but as someone who will sometimes take their MBPro with them instead of their PC, having to buy the game twice seems quite ridiculous once you know how the game is ran in MacOS.

XIV is not a Mac game, nor is it even optimized to play on Mac. Essentially XIV is using Wine to have the game run on your computer. There isn't much involved in the process for this as it can be done without the need of buying a Mac version. Download crossOver and install XIV using the PC version with a PC license.

Not only that, if one goes the crossOver route players will see significant performance gains with M1 users noting almost an increase of double FPS. This has only been increased with the release of crossOver 21 that has better support for M1 Macs.

Outside of "just cuz" what is the rationale for charging separately for Mac and PC? I can understand the Steam/SE versions for PC a bit more due to billing and distribution methods but I cannot for the life of me understand the PC/Mac difference.

They are essentially one and the same with the Mac version also being gimped due to being launched in a Wine like environment that isn't optimized. I could fully understand charging separately if SE optimized for M1 Macs as a native application or optimized at all; but sadly, they aren't and this seems more like a money grab than anything.

I always thought it was silly. When Stormblood was launching I was broke irl and made the silly mistake of purchasing the mac license. The early access codes were universal so I was having fun then when I went to redeem my actual code a day before it launched I noticed it was a mac code and couldn't justify or afford buying another PC key at the time so I was ready to quit but got lucky and friend gifted me another copy. Luckily later on I was able to find someone who needed a mac key and was able to trade it for a windows key for a friend.

If they ever announce that they are going to stop charging for Mac Versions it will mean only one thing - they are not going to release any updates for the Mac version.

Yes it does not make all that much sense. Originally they actually had a Mac version and not a wrapper but it was - "bad" is too kind a word. It was so awful they offered refunds.

The wrapper version does need its own testing and QA - which would not be funded if a PC licence covered access on the Mac also. I personally have both licences but prefer to pay on Mac instead of dipping into Bootcamp just because its simpler. It of course means I have to pay double for each expansion but I'm happy to continue to fund whatever "support" for MacOS the most popular MMOrpg is willing to offer until the pull the plug.

It's something you see fairly often with business software. e.g., you might buy 50 windows licenses, 10 mac licenses, 10 linux licenses... If you've seen that, it's not an unfamiliar concept.

But why SE carried this over into the consumer market is truly baffling. Particularly as it's tended towards "buy once use/play anywhere" for a while and it's only becoming moreso.

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Originally Posted by Bearded

The wrapper version does need its own testing and QA - which would not be funded if a PC licence covered access on the Mac also. I personally have both licences but prefer to pay on Mac instead of dipping into Bootcamp just because its simpler. It of course means I have to pay double for each expansion but I'm happy to continue to fund whatever "support" for MacOS the most popular MMOrpg is willing to offer until the pull the plug.

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Not to get too argumentative but that's the thing, the wrapper doesn't need its own testing. The wrapper is just Wine and unless Apple fundamentally changes the way its OS works then Wine is Wine. This doesn't even get into the part that the game runs better using crossOver with a PC license than with the Mac "version."

How is the mac version distributed? Is it through a 3rd party service like steam or do you have to download it from apple's app store? If its the latter then there is the whole reason for it. Apple tends to be exceptionally greedy as a distributor in regards to the "cut" they take from any transaction done through their billing platform for software or subscriptions for 3rd party services. Apparently Apple had in the past even required 3rd parties to only allow billing for things like in app purchases or subscriptions through apple's billing system which resulted in a case of Epic vs Apple that ended out with Epic paying apple compensation for what they did to bypass having charges for Fortnite things on apple devices go around the apple billing system but at the same time apple being forced to allow 3rd parties to take payment with their own billing systems for software played on apple devices.

It's also a way of sorts to get an idea of market distribution by platform in order to figure out if they should continue providing support for a platform. As an example they didn't remove PS3 support until they were sure most of the playstation players had moved over to PS4 and then did that campaign prior to try and encourage those remaining on PS3 at that time to upgrade and move over.

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Originally Posted by VisperCon

Not to get too argumentative but that's the thing, the wrapper doesn't need its own testing. The wrapper is just Wine and unless Apple fundamentally changes the way its OS works then Wine is Wine. This doesn't even get into the part that the game runs better using crossOver with a PC license than with the Mac "version."

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I work in software QA. The stuff I work on is "browser agnostic" in that it should work on any browser, unless they make a fundamental change (like you said.)

Right now we're *this* close to de-supporting Firefox because of all the bullshit changes they keep making in their web kit. Our schedule system is busted on Firefox, and we'd have to rewrite it from scratch again to fix it. (We can't hide scroll bars any more.) Half our reports are broken in Firefox.

For every system you claim to support, you *have* to test it, just as part of due diligence. Even if that means hiring a very tiny team or outsourcing that part of QA, it still has to be paid for.

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Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda

How is the mac version distributed? Is it through a 3rd party service like steam or do you have to download it from apple's app store?

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It's through SE. You download the installer just like you would a .exe and launch if that way - same as on PC no additional billing or other requirements as you go through the Mog Station for your subscription.

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Originally Posted by VisperCon

I love XIV but as someone who will sometimes take their MBPro with them instead of their PC, having to buy the game twice seems quite ridiculous once you know how the game is ran in MacOS.

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I fully agree here. While I can understand why they have to have Windows and Steam count as separate (and incompatible) platforms, macOS shouldn't be counted as a separate platform. Ideally, they'd get rid of all the platform lockouts, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.

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Originally Posted by VisperCon

XIV is not a Mac game, nor is it even optimized to play on Mac. Essentially XIV is using Wine to have the game run on your computer. There isn't much involved in the process for this as it can be done without the need of buying a Mac version. Download crossOver and install XIV using the PC version with a PC license.

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This is technically incorrect though. CrossOver, just like Wine in general, will get detected as the mac platform by default. Linux users get around this by installing Wine-Staging (or a custom build with Lutris) that sets HideWineExports to true in the registry, and that tricks FFXIV into thinking it's running on Windows. CrossOver does not include support for that in their binaries. And hacks to force it in would probably be frowned upon by SE, so I'm not going to elaborate on how that can be done. Just that it can.

So you can't just download CrossOver and use the PC license. You'll be required to use the Mac license there.

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Originally Posted by VisperCon

Not to get too argumentative but that's the thing, the wrapper doesn't need its own testing. The wrapper is just Wine and unless Apple fundamentally changes the way its OS works then Wine is Wine. This doesn't even get into the part that the game runs better using crossOver with a PC license than with the Mac "version."

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This is also not accurate. The wrapper ABSOLUTELY needs to be tested. Wine is not perfect, and naturally, neither is CrossOver. They're still converted Windows-only syscalls over to other platforms and Wine often has bugs and regressions where something they had working in an old version breaks on newer versions.

The reason CrossOver gets better performance than the official macOS wrapper is because it's packaged up with newer versions of Wine and CrossOver's modded DXVK. It also lets you enable esync. If you went and installed CrossOver 18 or 19 and compared it to the official Mac client, it'd probably be pretty similar. CrossOver 21 (current) has a lot of improvements. And it's based around Wine 6 as well.

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Originally Posted by reiichi

This is technically incorrect though. CrossOver, just like Wine in general, will get detected as the mac platform by default. Linux users get around this by installing Wine-Staging (or a custom build with Lutris) that sets HideWineExports to true in the registry, and that tricks FFXIV into thinking it's running on Windows. CrossOver does not include support for that in their binaries. And hacks to force it in would probably be frowned upon by SE, so I'm not going to elaborate on how that can be done. Just that it can.

So you can't just download CrossOver and use the PC license. You'll be required to use the Mac license there.

This is also not accurate. The wrapper ABSOLUTELY needs to be tested. Wine is not perfect, and naturally, neither is CrossOver. They're still converted Windows-only syscalls over to other platforms and Wine often has bugs and regressions where something they had working in an old version breaks on newer versions.

The reason CrossOver gets better performance than the official macOS wrapper is because it's packaged up with newer versions of Wine and CrossOver's modded DXVK. It also lets you enable esync. If you went and installed CrossOver 18 or 19 and compared it to the official Mac client, it'd probably be pretty similar. CrossOver 21 (current) has a lot of improvements. And it's based around Wine 6 as well.

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You don't need to change the registry, all that you to do is download the client through crossOver, make a new Windows 10 x64 bottle, install DIRECTV X, DXVK, and then install the FF14 setup files inside of this bottle. No hacking needed at all.

Your second point kind of goes to my point.

Yes if it's a commercial release they need to ensure it works but the investment is minimal at this point. The phrase "not even test" wasn't fair but to make it a big undertaking is far from the truth. crossOver 21 hasn't been tested or even implemented by SE but shows significant gains in performance. And again, no testing done was done by SE in the process. Patches have been released and XIVLauncher has been updated to already support Endwalker on release all without testing from SE.

I am fine having some charge to support the Mac version but in no world is full retail pricing justified; especially if one already has the PC version.

The simple truth is they're not the same product. I understand that it's frustrating that the Mac version isn't well optimised but it doesn't change the fact that it's not the same product as the PC or console versions.

When you pay for FFXIV the game you're not paying for the game as a whole, you're paying for a specific version of a client that runs that game.

Your account however is a single product that can access all versions of the game client which is why you do not need to pay separate sub fees to play on multiple platforms.

I understand that different platforms have different requirements and meeting those requirements costs time and money to develop for each platform, but it does suck that you have to pay full price if you want to have multiple clients of the game. It would be nice if you at least got a discount if you already own one version of the game client. And to prevent people from repeatedly reselling cheaper versions of the client SE could only allow the discount if it's bought through your Mog Station account so that each account could access the discount only once per version of the client.

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Originally Posted by VisperCon

You don't need to change the registry, all that you to do is download the client through crossOver, make a new Windows 10 x64 bottle, install DIRECTV X, DXVK, and then install the FF14 setup files inside of this bottle. No hacking needed at all.

Your second point kind of goes to my point.

Yes if it's a commercial release they need to ensure it works but the investment is minimal at this point. The phrase "not even test" wasn't fair but to make it a big undertaking is far from the truth. crossOver 21 hasn't been tested or even implemented by SE but shows significant gains in performance. And again, no testing done was done by SE in the process. Patches have been released and XIVLauncher has been updated to already support Endwalker on release all without testing from SE.

I am fine having some charge to support the Mac version but in no world is full retail pricing justified; especially if one already has the PC version.

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Well it's still a separate software license and if I remember right software providers actually have to use the same price across all distribution platforms which the regulation stating so probably makes no differentiation between PC and Mac in that regard. At the same time they probably cannot offer a discounted price for a mac key for people that have the pc version because it would likely cause problems with the number of people that purchased keys for PC and Playstation.

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Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda

Well it's still a separate software license and if I remember right software providers actually have to use the same price across all distribution platforms which the regulation stating so probably makes no differentiation between PC and Mac in that regard. At the same time they probably cannot offer a discounted price for a mac key for people that have the pc version because it would likely cause problems with the number of people that purchased keys for PC and Playstation.

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Apologies, but this is 100% incorrect (in the States). This would be almost the opposite of regulation and could be considered price fixing which is extremely illegal.

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Originally Posted by Penthea

The simple truth is they're not the same product. I understand that it's frustrating that the Mac version isn't well optimised but it doesn't change the fact that it's not the same product as the PC or console versions.

When you pay for FFXIV the game you're not paying for the game as a whole, you're paying for a specific version of a client that runs that game.

Your account however is a single product that can access all versions of the game client which is why you do not need to pay separate sub fees to play on multiple platforms.

I understand that different platforms have different requirements and meeting those requirements costs time and money to develop for each platform, but it does suck that you have to pay full price if you want to have multiple clients of the game. It would be nice if you at least got a discount if you already own one version of the game client. And to prevent people from repeatedly reselling cheaper versions of the client SE could only allow the discount if it's bought through your Mog Station account so that each account could access the discount only once per version of the client.

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I guess I just have a sour taste with this because the game is not designed for MacOS much less M1 Macs; conversely if someone looks at WoW not only is the game now native for M1 processors but you only need one copy of the game and no multiple copies of multiple expansions. They both have monthly fees and in-store cosmetics but for WoW the players only need one copy, one sub, one account, and can play on multiple platforms. I probably wouldn't be so vexed if it was a better company that did this but to see ActivisionBlizzard of all companies offer this while a far superior one (IMO) forces multiple purchases for a worse experience is frustrating.

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Originally Posted by VisperCon

Apologies, but this is 100% incorrect (in the States). This would be almost the opposite of regulation and could be considered price fixing which is extremely illegal.

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It's not price fixing at all to offer the same title for the same price regardless of where it is purchased, be it the windows store, mac store, steam, gog, epic game store, etc because it is set by 1 entity which is the seller of the product he regulation governing this situation has to do with essentially not allowing the vendor to encourage their consumers towards usage of 1 specific distribution network over others.

Price fixing is a practice by multiple parties or sellers offering the same product or service in order to maintain prices of that product or service for their own mutual benefit. This would be something like 3 different banks collaborating to decide high interest rates they will set for a specific region for their loans and credit accounts in order for all 3 to make more money off the accounts opened in that region.

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Originally Posted by VisperCon

I guess I just have a sour taste with this because the game is not designed for MacOS much less M1 Macs; conversely if someone looks at WoW not only is the game now native for M1 processors but you only need one copy of the game and no multiple copies of multiple expansions. They both have monthly fees and in-store cosmetics but for WoW the players only need one copy, one sub, one account, and can play on multiple platforms.

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I completely get that and I would feel badly about it too if I were in your position. However WoW expansions cost more than FF expansions, which basically means they're essentially doing the discount that I mentioned SE should do in my previous post. FF expansions are cheaper but only cover one client. WoW expansions cost more but cover multiple clients.

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Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda

It's not price fixing at all to offer the same title for the same price regardless of where it is purchased, be it the windows store, mac store, steam, gog, epic game store, etc because it is set by 1 entity which is the seller of the product he regulation governing this situation has to do with essentially not allowing the vendor to encourage their consumers towards usage of 1 specific distribution network over others.

Price fixing is a practice by multiple parties or sellers offering the same product or service in order to maintain prices of that product or service for their own mutual benefit. This would be something like 3 different banks collaborating to decide high interest rates they will set for a specific region for their loans and credit accounts in order for all 3 to make more money off the accounts opened in that region.

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You're going to have to point to regulation that describes your point.

SE can set whatever price they want but they cannot dictate the price the sellers sell their product. If Steam wants to lose money on XIV as an acquisition strategy to increase the player count on Steam’s version of XIV, that’s on them. That’s why it’s called a suggested retail price; they are not bound by it. It’s literally why you will see items for sale at one retailer and not another, even for software. Vendors are allowed to have deals with companies, that's also why you see "pre-order bonuses" from certain retailers with exclusive add-ons or content; content that would have a price if purchased from someone else. This is especially true if a company knows that Company-A has access to much a larger player base than Company-B so they may sweeten the pot to ensure Company-A highlights the product more than Company-B. This is completely legal.

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Originally Posted by Penthea

I completely get that and I would feel badly about it too if I were in your position. However WoW expansions cost more than FF expansions, which basically means they're essentially doing the discount that I mentioned SE should do in my previous post. FF expansions are cheaper but only cover one client. WoW expansions cost more but cover multiple clients.

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Shadowlands and Endwalker are both $40 at launch.

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Originally Posted by VisperCon

Shadowlands and Endwalker are both $40 at launch.

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My mistake or perhaps regional pricing differs depending on your location. I know that before I paid more for WoW expansions than FF expansions. But it's been many years since I bought a WoW expansion.

Whatever the case SE should at least offer a discount to those who buy additional versions of the client for the game when bought for the same account.

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Originally Posted by VisperCon

You don't need to change the registry, all that you to do is download the client through crossOver, make a new Windows 10 x64 bottle, install DIRECTV X, DXVK, and then install the FF14 setup files inside of this bottle. No hacking needed at all.

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This is still factually incorrect. You do need to change the registry if you want to use a Windows-only license service account. Please do not confuse that with having both Windows and macOS platforms on a single account.

When the official FFXIV launcher detects wine exports, it very clearly identifies itself as "FFXIV MAC VERSION" which happens to any Linux user who also doesn't hide wine.

CrossOver does not support hiding wine exports. Check their forums. Ask in their support channels. They'll tell you as much. You want FFXIV to think it's running on Windows, you have to use Wine-Staging or patch (aka hack) certain files in CrossOver to re-enable that feature.

You can test it yourself using some trial accounts. Make a new one just for macOS and you'll find it fails on Windows. Make a Windows trial account, and you'll see it can't login on macOS.

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That said, yes, validating FFXIV running in Wine should still absolutely be considered separate and different than running it natively on Windows. Just like how Square Enix had to tell PS5 users that while the PS4 copy of FFXIV would probably run fine, it wasn't tested and they should expect to see bugs until the official PS5 version (or any PS5-specific fixes for the PS4 version) was released.

I don't think it justifies being the same price as a separate platform either, but they're still likely paying money for CodeWeavers to do upkeep for them and for their QA team to go through all the same tests to ensure that wine is functioning as intended and they don't run into something that causes a fatal direct error or crashes the game. (Even though they've yet to fix the opening cutscene or title screen videos locking up the game because wine can't play those.)

It's probably because they have to support the Mac as a separate platform as well. It being the same/similar version as Windows running on Wine might not help if a Mac player contacts them and all they know is native Windows support.