Apple, Mac, Silicon, M1, macOS - Native Support for the next 10 years

[Johners]

Out of curiosity, what do you have to do extra to be able to play on a Mac? I’ve always used Mac professionally as a graphic designer, but I have a PC for gaming. I have a newish MacBook I bought last year, but I have no clue what kind of gpu it’s running. Can you not just play through Steam the same way as you can on PC?

Officially the Mac version is a separate game license but in reality it's just the Windows client in a compatibility layer provided/licensed from CrossOver (think WINE/Proton but with a commercial license). The problem is that it runs bad and is still an Intel CPU application so you're reliant on the Rosetta 2 compatibility layer (for x86-to-ARM support) still be within macOS.

In reality you get better real world performance, while also saving some money, by running the existing Windows/Steam client (and game license) in a WINE compatibility layer made by the community. There's a tool for this called XIVonMac. However, if Square Enix put the effort into natively porting the client to macOS like an ever increasing number of other games have been, the performance and overall user experience would be night and day better than anything relying on a compatibility layer.

Wuthering Waves, one of the popular gachas, has recently been ported to macOS and distributed via the Mac App Store. Blizzard's World of Warcraft has always had very good macOS support, even in both eras of PPC-to-x86 and x86-to-ARM transitions. Larian have ported Baldur's Gate 3, CDPR are porting Cyberpunk 2077 and, EA have always supported macOS well for The Sims. There's an audience for certain games on macOS and FFXIV isn't an exception but the existing user experience is dire.