Why are there both PC and Mac licenses?

[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.

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.

[ZeroSum]

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.

[Bearded]

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.

[Risvertasashi]

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.

[VisperCon]

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.

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."

[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? 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.

[Catwho]

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."

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.

[VisperCon]

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?

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.

[reiichi]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

[VisperCon]

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.

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.