Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Origin is a download store for the Feral games, it has a few nice features like save game sync but it is purely a download service like the Feral Download Store or MacGameStore. It does not embed DRM into the game like Apple and Valve do with the Mac AppStore and Steam. The game is the same as you would get on a DVD or from the feral download store.

You can delete Origin if you wish and the game will keep working, you can even copy the game to your second Mac and activate it without installing Origin again.

The only server connection is to validate your product key and the game only does this when you first activate the game on new hardware, after that it does not phone home to check the DRM without your specific request to do so via an "update" or "deactivate" button.

You can have it installed on up to 5 Macs at once (you can add and remove Macs) and activating multiple times on the same Mac only counts as a single activation.

Edwin

Origin is a download store for EA games. Origin recently joined them....for no viable reason.

Seriously, they were already in the apple app store, they only do apple ports, and the only machines that could run them all had the store already installed. Why Feral would join EA in anything is beyond me, but it concerns me.

Personally, I wouldn't buy anything through Origin because it is an EA product, and EA has done terrible things to the industry. If you can get the same game elsewhere, do so.
 
Black & White 2 will be getting a patch later this year. Apple don't have any rules on the age of a game but to meet the Apple Store rules the games need to be updated to use modern versions of XCode and APIs. As Apple has altered most things significantly since we shipped older games it sometimes takes a little while to get them updated and tested.

If you own a DVD copy you will be able to get the brand new patch (which removes the need to have the DVD in the drive while playing) as a completely free download.

Edwin

Does this mean Black and White 2 will make a debut on the app store.
 
If you can get the same game elsewhere, do so.

We offer our games on as many Mac download stores as possible and leave the decision on where to shop for your Mac game down to you.

We don't mind where you buy you games but we try and give everyone the widest choice possible, some people prefer one store over another and that's fine by us.

Edwin

----------

Does this mean Black and White 2 will make a debut on the app store.

That's the plan.
 
We offer our games on as many Mac download stores as possible and leave the decision on where to shop for your Mac game down to you.

We don't mind where you buy you games but we try and give everyone the widest choice possible, some people prefer one store over another and that's fine by us.

Edwin

----------



That's the plan.[/QUOTE

You made my day.
 
Black & White 2 will be getting a patch later this year. Apple don't have any rules on the age of a game but to meet the Apple Store rules the games need to be updated to use modern versions of XCode and APIs. As Apple has altered most things significantly since we shipped older games it sometimes takes a little while to get them updated and tested.

If you own a DVD copy you will be able to get the brand new patch (which removes the need to have the DVD in the drive while playing) as a completely free download.

Edwin

Oops, I missed some posts... Thank you and that's great news about Black and White 2 coming to the App Store! :D
 
Last edited:
There's also a load of Various Indie Bundles out there, with varying degrees of Mac support inside.

The Original one, Humble Bundle, works the hardest to give Win/Mac/Linux on their sales (though they have been letting that slip lately). I do believe they have their own developers on staff to help make those ports possible, Humble is definitely one of the good guys here. Humble also has a "Store", though they don't have a unified store front. Humble provides a widget for developers to throw on their own website + a unified download experience for the customer. Again, their usual MO is to offer all platforms DRM free + a Steam key, read all the details before buying.

There's also Indie Royale, Groupees, IndieGamestand (1 game every 4 days, BTA is usually $2). Desura (Indiegala) is another Steam/Origin-alike, I can never really tell what they're doing for downloading or using their client. GamersGate can have some great sales, but they are a bit of a mess about listing accurate DRM info, or keeping up with patch releases. GOG is the only one that really sticks to their DRM-free guns, now offering classic Windows/DOS games in a Mac wrapper alongside new indie titles. I slightly prefer Humble to GOG for throwing in Steam keys with the deal, they're both worth checking up on frequently.

Wineskin is a tool to wrap up Windows games to look like a regular Mac.app, and what GOG uses for any of their classic game releases. You can use it yourself to wrap up many games, look up a game at WineHQ to gauge your odds of success.

If you have the option to get a Mac game with the PC version thrown in, go for that instead of only the Mac build. Some Mac ports are just awful (ahem, Super Meat Boy), and better off with emulating the PC version. The MacOS game API is not set in stone like WinXP32/DirectX9c, the emulation options for PC games will keep getting better while your old Mac UT2004 discs gather dust.

SteamPlay is a great system to buy both sides at once. I have Borderlands 2 installed twice for Native and Parallels because the two platforms can't play together (lol version skew). Clasically, porting a game to Mac meant that the porter had to pay for rights up front, rights per copy, and Mac always got stuck with something expensive and late. Aspyr seems to have gotten a deal where they get a piece of the unified sales of BL2, Mac customers get a better deal/experience, and everybody wins. Feral needs to pay attention here, a $30 premium on a year old game doesn't cut it anymore. Perhaps selling either/or platform on Steam, and upping it to both with a $15 DLC would be acceptable. The straight SteamPlay sale is best for the customer, I don't care how you split revenue and will bend my purchases to whomever figures this out first. Aspyr has a head start (hint: I would buy BI right now if they promised SteamPlay).
 
Last edited:
Actually it is. OS X and Linux use OpenGL.

So many version numbers to choose from, all of which need a different set of Nvidia or ATI extensions & shader languages to get any real work done. OpenGL does nothing to make sure the sound gets mixed and delivered on time (good luck there on Linux), or collecting input, or loading assets, or any other Game API job that isn't triangles. You don't have to care about whether you have a Western Digital or Hitachi drive when choosing what kind of file types to save on it, with OpenGL you have go through exactly that mess. It is not a good abstraction layer for an application programmer, it really needs layers like Quartz or Unity to tame it.

That wasn't even my point, though. The point is that there are a lot of projects like Wine and Cider and Parallels and VMware and VirtualBox that have taken a keen interest in dealing with the legacy of DirectX9. There is zero interest* in keeping 10.4 PPC software running today. You will get the same level of support when your software written for 10.7 opens an OpenGL context perfectly, and segfaults from some other API change in the next MacOS. Heck, maybe we'll just change the whole CPU on you, haven't done that in the last couple of years.

*PearPC, last updated 2011, isn't going to run Halo anytime soon.
 
Eddie, EA is a dangerous company to work with. While there are gains to be expected by increasing visibility in the market, be wary of who you work with.

EA doesn't just screw over their customers. This is a dangerous long-term strategy.
 
Eddie, EA is a dangerous company to work with. While there are gains to be expected by increasing visibility in the market, be wary of who you work with.

EA doesn't just screw over their customers. This is a dangerous long-term strategy.

They are big boys and girls at Feral who didn't just startup last week. I think you can rest easy about the intelligence with which they make business decisions and retail partnerships.

I don't understand why EA is Satan to you but you have a right to your own views and preferences of course. Personally, I am happy to see EA supporting the Mac with games, a new online store and the appearance of more Mac titles coming. What's not to love? I've enjoyed a lot of great entertainment from EA over many years myself. They never did me any wrong.
 
Two games I', really enjoying at the moment are The Cave (developed with Ron Gilbert, him of Monkey Island fame) and Minecraft, which I thought looked crap, but the gameplay is excellent.
 
I think we need a dose of realism in here about EA. Don't let the internet and the way it dictates whats good and bad, shroud your judgement. No one person or company is exempt from redemption. G

Origin, IS a very stable platform, in fact it is the most stable digital download service available to OS X and the Frostbite engine IS coming to OS X this year. Either way some of EA's biggest titles will be coming to OS X natively no doubt and I for one am very happy for this.

Not everyone hates EA. Sure I wish they would leave some developers alone to get on with there work but I am sure these are lessons learned.

A bit of perspective please.
 
I think we need a dose of realism in here about EA. Don't let the internet and the way it dictates whats good and bad, shroud your judgement. No one person or company is exempt from redemption. G

Origin, IS a very stable platform, in fact it is the most stable digital download service available to OS X and the Frostbite engine IS coming to OS X this year. Either way some of EA's biggest titles will be coming to OS X natively no doubt and I for one am very happy for this.

Not everyone hates EA. Sure I wish they would leave some developers alone to get on with there work but I am sure these are lessons learned.

A bit of perspective please.

Well said.
 
I stopped caring about EA the moment they removed games from your account when they transitioned the accounts from EAstore to Origin, without notice. I had the digital version of black & White 2 and the expansion and they got removed for no reason without explaination.
So for me the lesson learned is: EA = **** :)
 
I think we need a dose of realism in here about EA. Don't let the internet and the way it dictates whats good and bad, shroud your judgement. No one person or company is exempt from redemption. G

Origin, IS a very stable platform, in fact it is the most stable digital download service available to OS X and the Frostbite engine IS coming to OS X this year. Either way some of EA's biggest titles will be coming to OS X natively no doubt and I for one am very happy for this.

Not everyone hates EA. Sure I wish they would leave some developers alone to get on with there work but I am sure these are lessons learned.

A bit of perspective please.

Yeah sure, Sims, Spore etc. is just in a wrapper and runs like its on a decade old PC.
 
Care to elaborate on etc? Are those games on the Frostbite engine?

Nope but they use a wrapper around the Windows version to allow Mac OS X to run it so they are not native apps. It takes a massive performance hit and some people can't even run them. Etc. because most of their Mac games after the switch used wrappers.
 
Apparently they tend not to use wrappers. The latest Sim City will use openGL on the Mac, as they say, and Dice is porting Frostbite to OS X, which certainly involves more than a wrapper.

----------

the Frostbite engine IS coming to OS X this year.
Well the OSX engineer position appears to be available (I could apply if I wanted too ;)), so I'm not too optimistic about frostbite running natively on the Mac this year.
http://dice.se/jobs/mac-os-x-engineer/
Any OS X openGL engineer in this room? :D
 
QuakeLive, the best FPS (IMO) out there. Free to play, with options for premium and pro accounts.


What are some awesome free/paid games for Mac? I am running OSX 10.8.3 on a MacBook Pro retina, 16GB RAM, 2.6GHz Quad core intel i7, 512 GB SSD.
 
Last edited:
Game Suggestions

How has no one in this thread suggested Left for Dead 2 or Portal 1&2 (Steam) - Shame on you people.

Also Bioshock 1&2 (Mac Store) are a requirement to own if you have any passing interest in games. I think it's a law somewhere.

Deus Ex (Mac Store) is also a solid choice.
 
So many version numbers to choose from, all of which need a different set of Nvidia or ATI extensions & shader languages to get any real work done. OpenGL does nothing to make sure the sound gets mixed and delivered on time (good luck there on Linux), or collecting input, or loading assets, or any other Game API job that isn't triangles.
SDL can do sound, input, and setting up the windows (something that OpenGL doesn't do, cross-platform), and is cross-platform. OpenAL allows 3D positional audio and is also cross-platform and comes with OS X starting in 10.4.
 
Eddie, EA is a dangerous company to work with. While there are gains to be expected by increasing visibility in the market, be wary of who you work with.

EA doesn't just screw over their customers. This is a dangerous long-term strategy.

They are big boys and girls at Feral who didn't just startup last week. I think you can rest easy about the intelligence with which they make business decisions and retail partnerships.

Not only that, but companies like Feral and Aspyr have been dealing with EA for well over a decade. I think Feral's first EA title was F1 Championship Season 2000. Aspyr brought us many beloved EA titles such as SMAC/SMAX, Undying, Alice, and BF1942, going back to at least 1999.

EA isn't the greatest, or the smartest, or the most ethical company in the world, but the blind rage surrounding EA is bordering on ludicrousness. And as the MW2 Boycott and L4D2 Boycott proved, most of these people will end up buying and playing EA games anyway.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.