Do you need to pay for one desktop client (Mac/PC) if you have the other?

[starmike]

Hi all,
I wanted to put XIV on my MacBook Pro for when I'm away, and I already have it installed on my PC gaming rig. With pretty much any MMO, you pay for one license and can use both Win and Mac clients. However, when I installed XIV on my Mac, it asked me for my registration code, despite accepting my login/pw. Do I have to pay for the Mac version and all the expansions? That seems silly since they game is probably just C++/C# and like I said, other games allow you to use either client.

Thanks

[Enkidoh]

Yes, the Mac version is a seperate version to PC (Windows) so it requires a seperate license that needs to be purchased (same with the PS4 and PS5 versions if you also want to play on console).

You can use your characters and everything across platforms though when you've bought a license for each platform.

[starmike]

Well that's just ridiculous. Every other MMO that does cross-platform doesn't force you to pay for two clients. It's probably just an Obj C wrapper around the core C++ anyway.

Do you have to pay for each expansion also, or just the main client?

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Well that's just ridiculous. Every other MMO that does cross-platform doesn't force you to pay for two clients. It's probably just an Obj C wrapper around the core C++ anyway.

Do you have to pay for each expansion also, or just the main client?

Can install windows on your mac to get around that if you want, otherwise, need to buy licenses for it, just like Playstation.

[_Pigzig]

yup
mac version isnt even a real version too, its just running in wine

[starmike]

yup
mac version isnt even a real version too, its just running in wine

....is it? I have Wine. Hmm...

[Packetdancer]

mac version isnt even a real version too, its just running in wine

I suspect part of the reason it's a separate license is because Codeweavers does a lot of the Mac version's maintenance for them, and they need to pay Codeweavers.

Because it's not the exact same Windows client as the normal Windows download; it is a variant compiled with optimizations for Codeweavers Crossover -- which, itself, is a WINE variant that has a lot of gaming-specific optimizations. For instance, stock WINE -- at least last I checked, though this may have changed -- does not support Metal on MacOS by default, so any DirectX emulation in WINE takes some performance hit; Crossover uses DXVK to translate DirectX into Vulkan 1.2, and then MoltenVK to translate Vulkan 1.2 into Metal, thus allowing the client to still use hardware graphics acceleration. So while as far as I know, FFXIV should run under WINE successfully, but I suspect the performance will not be quite as good as the Crossover variant is.

Which doesn't change the fact that it's annoying to buy what is functionally more or less just the Windows client (and a Crossover license) a second time.

[starmike]

What about my second question - do I have to pay for just the main Mac client, or each expansion?

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

What about my second question - do I have to pay for just the main Mac client, or each expansion?

You have to buy the same things you buy for windows. So to play now, complete edition, to play endwalker, then you need to buy that too.

[Random0]

The Wineskin XIV uses was heavily customized by Transgaming in order to 'port' it to macOS, then Nvidia bought up TG and has been doing seemingly the bare minimum of upkeep since then.


However it's still enough that SE treats it as a separate platform since they have to devote resources provide specific support like they do with the Playstation clients. You also need to buy the expansions for each client if you want to access areas of that expansion on that client (for example if you don't have Shadowbringers on Mac you can't go to the First).