Why are there both PC and Mac licenses?

[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.

[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."

[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.

[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.

[RitsukoSonoda]

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.

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.

[VisperCon]

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.

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.

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.

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.

[reiichi]

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.

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.)