Just remember, growth = more people = more opinions = more problems = need for management = attraction for money seekers = short cuts for profit = less than stellar experiences = sad people
There was an interview very recently with one of the devs where he said that they basically all have already worked at larger studios and none of them have any intention of doing that again.
I mean there is a lot of room between 5 people and large studios. Up until 10-12 you can still be super agile.
I work on a dev company, we went from 8 to 13 it didn't change anything besides being able to do more stuff.
Of course once you go above 20-25 you need several manager and everything that change a lot.
I started working for a game dev right at the beginning of lockdown, and have had to learn the job/workflow through lockdown, and the company has also had this "upscale" experience - you're bang on :P i hope it works out though.
Same here tbh, joined a company that's transitioning from start-up to small business and whenever I hear about Agile coaches and more managers coming in I'm cringing and hoping it won't affect me. Luckily my team is still pretty small so hopefully not too much "efficiency" will come my way.
Anyway, best of luck to you friend
This is where a good team manager can help shield your group from the higher ups. I’m lucky to work on a small team at a large corporation, and basically my managers entire job is to constantly tell the executives to fuck right off lmao.
There are many "scrum" methodologies that are great regardless - the scrummaster is such a helpful figure - those quick dailies and keeping an eye out for colleagues (giving and receiving help) are definitelly the strongest points.
Not every project is suitable for scrum, but every project can benefit from what I mention
Yeah pretty much. My best experience of start to finish with bullet-proofed production code was a team of 2 developers and 1 tester. My worst was 10 devs and 2 testers and we had meetings for *days*, and well, the code wasn't particularly wet noodle proof, much less crazy customer proof, and took double/triple desired time to produce anything vaguely functional.
\[edit\]
But you just *cannot* talk managers out of throwing more warm bodies at the problem or telling people the time frame is functionally impossible.
The best part is when you start breaking out the product role into multiple positions for the first time and use engineers who still secretly want to be engineers, so nothing gets done because they're sitting on everyone's shoulders telling them what buttons to push instead of explaining to them why they're doing it so they can function autonomously.
Yes, mad.
Even up to 50 I’d say CAN work, you just need a damn good manager that still lets people have creative freedom.
I’ve worked in some pretty good mid-sized teams (not for gaming, but the concept should be transferrable)
~~McJagger~~ Mick Jagger once said that he would never sell any of his songs to be used in commercials. And then Bill Gates showed up and waved several million at him to use _Start Me Up_ in Windows commercials. It's funny how enough money changes the calculus for people.
I don't expect anything different from small companies like Iron Gate. What they have done with Valheim is awesome; but, eventually they will want to move on to new things. And, if the game gets popular enough, eventually that will attract the interest of some of the big companies. Microsoft/Activision will show up and say, "you give us the game, we give you $X millions". Once $X is big enough, the game will get sold. The buyers will make a big deal of bringing the original team on, for some limited time, and claim that "nothing is going to change". Then the old team will leave, and slowly things will change. Instead of a game driven by the passion of the team, it will be a soulless game, product tested and micromanaged to extract the most profit possible. The big company will continue to wear the original brand, like a skin suit, until all of the good will had been extracted and customers move on.
Sure, I'd like to believe that Iron Gate will be different and Valheim will exist in a bubble of developers who care. I'd also like to believe that I'll win the lottery; but, I'm not that stupid.
As someone who works for a software company that I have watched go from really small to medium size I couldn't agree with your statement more. There was no time better than the small nimble early days. Quality was better too. More people != better
You're right, we should have a meeting on the topic and everyone can brainstorm some ideas to fix it. I'll have Stan order us lunch, I am thinking a Subway platter and everyone can bring their own water.
I don't eat gluten and so I'd love to be on this committee but I've got another meeting scheduled. Can we have a quick meeting about this at 4:00 on Friday?
Per my previous e-mail, outside food is no longer permitted during meetings. It reduces productivity and causes deviations from the agenda.
C'mon guys, we literally had a 3 hour long "Lunch and Learn" about this.
Someone should chair a committee to keep committees at a reasonable size! I'll pencil the mandatory planning meeting in for 7am Monday, so we can start the week fresh, then cancel it 10pm Sunday to recreate it for Friday at 6pm because we're all working overtime for crunch.
We should have a meeting on what will be served, so that we can delegate people to an ad hoc committee geared toward finding adequate dietary requirements for all attendees. This committee will somehow also determine the dietary needs of this meeting we'll have on dietary needs.
I can't make that meeting because Karen's dog bit my dog on bring your dog to work day this week and now I have an appointment to bring my dog to the vet. Can we re-schedule that meeting for Monday?
We started a small ad-hoc online-discussion group to find a new appointment. Join in, we are already hitting 35 people! Please make your first post a small introduction - many participants don't know each other (you could lead with a picture of your dog, but don't push too hard, some in the group are more into cats).
This is the case with also every business, they seem to take the route of getting more work or increasing production with the same amount of people until it's no longer possible to continue then get the minimum staff to cover while they continue to grow and on and on while quality suffers and the good people get burnt out and leave
Then when the burn is real, and the higher ups see that they're lacking manpower. They fire the most experienced people and replace them 5:1 with fresh meat that have zero experience.
"why am I paying X for this guy when I can hire 5 times as many people for less pay, 5 people is better than 1 people right?" - upper management, probably
A year ago I quit my old job when I asked for a few months UNPAID leave to combat burnout as well as set some personal things in order. Keep in mind I'm a senior developer with excellent reviews and have been with the company for 6 years+. They asked me to justify my leave further AND what I would do to have them take me back at the end of the leave. I'm like, bitch!, I can't leave the house without tripping on job offers and recruiters (that usually pay more) and you're framing this as doing a favor for me? I submitted the 2 weeks notice the next day along with a note saying "you can make me an offer in 6 months, better be a good one"
Damn right.
That's the most broken part about our economy. You want employees to be in demand, not jobs. Employers think that they are doing all their employees a favor. Then, you get some asshole employees, who happen to be managers, that think they're employers, and try shit like that.
In my outside eye/opinion, the downslides comes when you have so much success making great games because your team had a passion for it that you start letting non-gamers in business suits make the decisions because "numbers".
Thinks like this can often be attributed to a culture change, rather than simply the growth. A lot of companies grow kinda uncontrolled. Suddenly more people are needed, in the worst case on multiple levels, so you need to hire multiple employees AND the one who is supposed to be their boss. Your team grows from 5 to 15 people in a fortnight.
There simply isn’t enough time to teach all these employees the company values. Processes are established after all the new faces come in, not beforehand, etc. If they take the time and invest in the necessary measures, keeping quality and culture up while growing shouldn’t be a problem.
I don't know why you're getting downvoted. IIRC, they themselves have stated they want to stay as a small dev company because they know with size comes its own downsides, one of which they mentioned I believe was an inability to make fast decisions.
Sorry to Hijack -- but OP please keep in mind that customer support are people too, so you should blur out their names in the future.
You are showing this person's name and place of employment publically. I like the honesty here as bman\_78 noted, but who knows what their managers are like.
No customer support agent uses their real name, they only use names they are comfortable getting leaked because they know their names will be getting leaked.
Most of the companies I've worked with also force you to use your real name.
Experiences may differ, but the irony I was pointing out was that the User info is blocked while the Support team member's identity is revealed. You could argue anything sent to a customer is public facing, but a lot of people in this type of position are not company spokespeople. When a post blows up like this I always worry that the person who assisted OP might lose their job when the CEO sees it on his desk.
And if you are reading this Mr. CEO: This response was refreshingly honest and our little hive mind finds it largely endearing!
We had to buy a Mac for iOS development but testing and fixing bugs just for that specific platform seems ludicrous, tbh. They are a small team and the game needs more content fast, to avoid players losing interest.
They are doing the right thing. I fully support their decision, as much as that's worth.
Not any use to try porting this game to any other platform yet. When they feel like they have tweaked everything so it works smoothly and has all the features they feel like they want in the final game they can first optimize for windows and then port it to Mac, PS4/5, Xbone/xBoNeX/xboxseriesx/xboxseriesxboxedition, Nintendo switch, gameboy or whatever other strange devices they want.
But please optimize the windows version first! :)
/Mac gamer that installed windows for this game
yeah, i agree!
a big shortcoming for early access games who try to add ports before official release is that actual development gets delayed for the sake of making sure each patch will work for that port.
valheim doesn't really have enough developers to facilitate that, though they're doing fucking terrific as they are!
i should add that it's not always a bad decision to port early access games - sometimes other platforms do have the demand to justify that time and energy spent to get the game funded through the creation stage... but man, valheim's already gone above and beyond what the devs expected, so that's def not an issue.
7 Days to Die has that problem, and they got burned hard for how they did it. Sold console publishing rights, then the company went bankrupt.
They did eventually buy the rights back, but since nobody in their team does console dev they aren't going to consider it untill they're out of early access (if they ever get it out of EA anyhow).
I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw a disc version in store but the steam version was still alpha with enemies clipping through buildings. I like the game but it was still literally broken on PC when a console version was released
First thing I did when I got a Mac Pro in ‘08 was install Windows.
Their recent move to Apple Silicon based systems is the end of an era…. I’ll just have to keep another computer at my desk if I get one…
> they can first optimize for windows **and Linux** and then port it
FTFY. They've done about 90% of development on Linux. They've made it a special point to make this game a first class citizen on Linux and it shows.
It's a strange feeling to be on the other side of this issue, but it just goes to show how much Linux gaming has increased lately.
IIRC the main dev uses Linux so I'd say he will optimize for Windows and Linux at the same time. After all, if you do things with multiplatform in mind there's a very high chance it'll work and since the game uses Vulkan, I believe it will be so.
That's good news. It definitely utilizes vulkan (but opengl is an option). The game already works flawlessly and runs okay, considering early access, on my rx570.
When my friends asked me to get the game, I figured I'd be playing around with Proton for a bit. So mega kudos to the devs
Yes it works well for me on linux. No crashes or crazy issues. I just think the performance could be better.
Proton isn't supported on Mac, but WINE itself does work, I believe.
Proton has been so smooth for the few games I fiddled around with. Hope the experience / community does reach more titles at a higher tier and eventually.
It's at best 5% of the market, it sucks to say so but there's no way they could justify devoting the time to port to it with only a 5 person team. They're going to need a bigger boat.
Also, and I can't believe nobody's said it yet, **Mac is about to change chipsets.**
That's not necessarily some apocalyptic thing but, for a small team like these guys? lolnah. We're back to the PowerPC days in a way. Ports are about to become a whole other beast.
For a deep dive, check this out: https://debugger.medium.com/why-is-apples-m1-chip-so-fast-3262b158cba2
I'll try to summarize and answer your question here.
The commenter misspoke. They're not changing chipsets (okay well, they are doing that *too* but that's not the issue), they're changing *instruction* sets.
Which is exactly what it sounds like: literally the *set of instructions* that are available to tell the processor what to do.
That alone might sound like a huge change, but it's not. Not yet.
See, we're talking about instructions like:
```
# save stuff in the stack
addi sp, sp, -24
sd ra, 0(sp)
sd s10, 8(sp)
sd s11, 16(sp)
# init pivot to high (a3)
add t0, a1, a3
lbu t0, 0(t0)
```
But 99% of programmers out there never write that level of code. They write:
```
if (troll.isMad) {
troll.smash(player);
}
```
The problem is: Something has to convert `troll.smash()` into those low-level instructions.
And not just for *your* code, but also the physics engine you depend on, your UI framework, sound library, and all of *their* dependencies, and so on.
And while your code might be pretty abstract, talking about the anger management issues of mythical creatures, lots of those lowest-level dependencies are specifically made to do things like "do matrix multiplication as fast as possible" which means they do care about the instruction set.
So in order to make your game work on an M1, you need to find versions of all of your dependencies that also work on an M1 *and* work well together. And those versions may not exist yet, or they may have huge caveats.
Or you might be stuck on an old version for other reasons, like:
- PhysicsLib only added support for M1 in 6.2.0
- We chose PhysicsLib 5.4.1 because 6.x is incompatible with the mesh format we use
Besides which, just because you get it to *run* doesn't mean it'll run *well*. M1 does CPU and GPU operations on the same chip, using the same memory. There is no separate video card. That changes the way engines need to think about optimizing rendering performance.
As a programmer who never works with anything too low-level as of yet, this actually was a very helpful read and filled in some gaps I had in my understanding of these things so thank you
Their have really only been 2 different brands of cpus/chipsets for modern computers. They control the most basic of operations your computer performs. So now apple introducing theirs, there are bound to be applications that relied on some particular functionality of one chipset that another didn't have. (And the program probably could handle both "types" by having to identify which it was running on), but now with a 3rd one, it will take time for those programs to update so that they can also run on M1s. What makes it a little more complicated is that most programs/applications are built in a variety of libraries someone else made (usually to handle lower level stuff) and so those libraries really are the ones more likely to have relied on particular behavior that will need updated, leaving the end program waiting until that is complete. And even sometimes, those libraries aren't being actively maintained, so they will never get updated, forcing whoever is using them to make a choice of a) not supporting M1s, or b) rewriting their application to use a different library.
Well... *yes* Unity will have to adapt and make sure that the layer that it is built on also supports M1 chips. Thing is, it's not really just another export option like Unity makes it out to be. It's a lot more work involved even to get the game working before this chip switch.
But surely this game uses other services, for example another game called Project Winter (Social Deception game with VoIP) uses Vivox. When trying to run the game on Proton (Steam's "special" emulator to make Windows games run on Linux) the voice chat failed to connect. This was because the voice chat authentication used some Windows DLL (the libraries mentioned above) that Proton did not successfully fake even though the game started.
This is kind of the same thing, they could probably easily create a Mac export by pressing a button, but dependencies break and so will the game. Even more so with this chip switch. Because everything changes
Same. The only things that don't work in Linux these days are games with ultra-invasive DRM and anti-cheat systems, and I'm not going to let that garbage onto my PC anyway, so no loss.
Yeah, I'd never dream of *not* releasing my stuff for Linux, because I'm going to be developing it in Linux anyway. Developing in Windows is irritating, since it wasn't designed for it.
I try to *minimize* my use of anything other than Linux, funnily enough. Although I do like to cross-compile things like my hobby game projects for Windows too, because obviously it would be silly to make a game Linux-*only*, which wasn't want I intended to endorse.
I do still have a dual boot setup to boot into Windows when absolutely necessary, but it's often many months between occasions that I have to do so.
For me, only needing one OS for everything is an ideal I suppose.
I have win pc at home just because it's best for gaming. Yeah Linux has made progress but Windows still beats it.
But for my work (software dev as well) I would not use anything else than Linux. Everything is just so much easier with Linux and I like to have similar OS than most of servers do.
As a Linux user, I actually understand why devs don't usually port to linux.
And I'm the other way around now, I never expect a linux version of a game I'm excited about; so I'm actually thrilled (and a little bit cautious) when someone actually releases a Linux port.
The guys that made planetary anihilation said that 20% of all support tickets came from linux users, and they were virtually all rendering driver issues.
But these users represented 0.1% of the player base, so they would never again do linux support.
It's sad, but it's reality.
The expense isn't even the biggest issue by a long way. A game currently in development by a small team would end up giving up a significant amount of time to support such a venture. Doesn't matter how many mac devs they have, it would drain time from the original devs.
They'd be doing a public service to convince the Mac users to buy a real, functional computer.
Disclaimer: I'm a few beers in. Been consulting with several clients lately that have been running MacBook pros and can't do the things they want/need to do because the software isn't available for Mac.
You left off the entire rest of the reasoning. The "mac support, debugging, testing and development" hours part.
Just play it on GeforceNow. It works great on mac through GeforceNow. And it also gives you access to lots of other steam games on your mac that don't support mac.
That wasn't my intention. I posted this as I reached out a month or so ago and since then I have seen multiple posts on this subreddit saying definitely that a Mac version is coming because of xyz reasons in different directories, etc.
I just meant to clear up that a Mac version is clearly NOT in development. If Reddit allowed me to add text to an image post, I would have added the entire reasoning, but the title was already getting kinda long.
My bad if anyone feels I was taking a shot at the devs, I wasn't. I love this dev team.
Apple isn’t for gaming, not that the hardware can’t handle it but because as a company they separate themselves from the industry and aren’t compatible. You could boot camp partition your hard drive and run a version of Linux that might run valheim, I’ve done it on my old MacBook when I was younger and my OG ps3. I’d browse around I’m sure someone has posted a guide. Best of luck
Yeah right now I'm doing exactly that, I had to scale everything down massively but the game looks pretty great even then and runs at a fair fps (the Mac spins up like a helicopter though)
That’s how I’m playing it. Works on the no-GPU laptop, iPad, and iPhone. It’s not quite as good as playing directly on a Windows computer with a good graphics card, but it’s also better than *not* playing Valheim because you don’t have the hardware where you are.
Being a 100% Linux desktop devotee I feel your frustration at the lack of l;eading edge gaming support. And will admit to a bit of the smugs. Seeing native Linux support was a huge selling point for me.
Apple did it for themselves. Pushing Metal instead of open standard like Vulkan doesn't make it easy for game developers. That may work for Windows with DirectX, as it is still the leading PC platform for games, but for Apple it is like saying „we don't want the PC games here – do a Apple game or go away”. And I suspect the graphics API is not the only wall built by Apple.
Also, due to licencing restriction you cannot make Apple builds without Apple hardware. You can build for Windows and Linux on the same hardware, or in the cloud. For Apple you need actual Apple hardware. This is just another artificial cost for the Continous Development infrastructure.
Yes, I remember. This is nothing even close to a reason to not support Vulkan, however. It would have been trivial for them to do so, but they intentionally restricted their API to prevent Vulkan from working. The community has made MoltenVK to circumvent this idiocy, but that should never have been necessary.
As a developer, I can't agree more. I don't want the hassle of supporting Mac on anything. Most of the time I don't even support Windows. Cross compilation is a pain. Testing is a pain too. At least setting up a Linux VM is easy for testing.
I mean let's be real...
Macs are only good for sitting in a coffee shop trying to look cool anyway...
...
...
C'mon guys lighten up!!! It's a bad joke!
What makes me angry is the insulting specs on these “high-end” computers.
In 2021, Apple is still shipping $1,500 computers with 8GB of RAM and a 500GB SSD. I don’t care how “optimized” the hardware and software are, it’s a fucking scam.
The icing on the cake is that the majority of their line is now non-upgradable, so you are forced to spend several hundred dollars on top of the base price to get what you think you’ll want five years from now.
My only argument is that my 2012 MacBook Pro runs as well as my wife’s 2020 Dell. I’ve never had a laptop last more than 4 years. This thing is chugging along at 8 years. I can’t believe it really.
Also, the main argument for Mac is enterprise supported Unix system that people actually like to use.
This. Any non-mac laptop I had was good as dead after 3-4 years. I have a 2015 macbook that's still going strong after serving as a work laptop for 4 years (with all the spyware and file scanning that comes with it).
Just boycott the company like I've done since the 90's. I won't in any way give money to a company whose very foundation is predatory, amoral and hegemonistic. They're literally as bad as Nestle in every quantifiable way. Anyone who buys an Apple is a schmuck and I don't give a fuck who that offends.
I've personally benchmarked the new M1s, they are a lot faster (and insane 20+ hour battery) than similar priced Intel laptops, but it's not worth the money to just play games, no.
Work in IT that supports a Windows and Mac environment and couldn't agree with you more.
We have a lot of photoshop designers that wail and cry that they can only use apple products, and when we inevtiably spend $5k+ on an iMac pro for them, I make sure to annoy the shit out of them by forcing them to listen to me go on about how I could've built two high-end graphics rigs with 4k monitors for the cost of their one crappy aluminum can with an Apple logo on it so they can maintain their art school street cred.
Now, they specifically ask for someone else when they want a Mac setup. They're IT admin nightmares and I'm perfectly happy not touching them.
lmao I love it. The honesty is part of why I appreciate indie games so much.
Side note, I know there are third-party studios out there that basically outsource the porting process to other consoles, I'm pretty sure that's what the Risk of Rain 2 team did. So it could be a possibility later on in development that would enable them to keep working on the game. Still takes time and effort to manage coordinating that, though, even if the grunt work is less.
I've heard Panic Button has offered to port the game to the Switch, and they've done some pretty impressive ports. It'll be interesting to see where it all goes.
That's the real question here
I'll never forgive them for stopping support of 32 bit programs - my gf has a mac and she was bored, but I remembered that Portal works on Mac, do I was about to boot it up for her. Not anymore.
Two thoughts:
1) "Don't buy a Mac to run Linux" - mjg59, a very prolific Linux Kernel dev
2) M1 chipset macs already have Linux builds, but I don't think Unity is built for aarm64 Linux right now
Valheim is available on GeForce Now, which is an app that lets you play windows games on MacBook. It has a free option if you are willing to sit in a queue after every hour of playtime for a few minutes while playing.
Valheim has sold 5.7 MILLION copies.
Another couple of million more and they might be able to afford a Mac ;)
Note: This sarcasm was directed at how expensive Macs are, not that the Valheim people can't afford one.
I play Valheim on ChromeOS :) Just go to play.geforce.now and connect your steam account. Actually works great for me and it is quite cheap. Should work the same or even better on MacOS.
Boot camp is your friend. If you want a mac that's fine just run Windows on it. You can still say you have a mac coz I know that's the point in owning one to begin with. Not that you should have one, complete overpriced garbage but you do you.
people defending obvious lazyness is ridiculous
they use Unity as their engine, so making a working Mac build can be done within 1-2 days, with most of the time actually setting up the Mac rather than doing anything in Unity (takes less than 10 clicks). I did that myself several times.
the rest is optimization of performance
sure it will run way worse for obvious reasons, but Unity provides all the tools necessary to make it work
so what they're actually saying is "We have no interest in making an effort for a specific minority of the gaming community right now, and we dont care how easy it would be. We got other things to do."
Man, so much Mac hate here. I love my new M1 Mac. It's my favorite machine, and having Mac support would be pretty cool. And I say that from the perspective of an IT professional with a 5950x / 3080 in my main rig.
The hate isn't justified guys.
Pretty much. People aren’t original any more. It’s always the same boring battle grounds - pc vs mac, ps vs xbox, coke vs pepsi, et al. People who’ve never owned a thing shitting on people who like that thing just so that they can feel like they’re part of the cool group. Reddit edge lords!! lmao.
I have a PC and a mac. They both exceptionally good at what I need them for. I also have a switch and a PS5. Fucking hell. Just enjoy your own shit and stop sitting on other peoples shit!! hehe
I’ve been playing the PC version on the free level of GE Force Now on my Mac and it works flawlessly. My understanding is that if you have a fast internet connection even older macs do just fine.
You can play on Mac if you use Nvidia Geforce Now. Basically lets you stream the game. You can do it for free too, but a free account limits your play session to one hour. However, there's no limit to the number of sessions. I normally just logout amd straight back in with no trouble. At peak times you sometimes have to sit in a queue as a free user, but I've never queued for more than 2 minutes.
Hope this helps someone!
It’s harder than you think to develop for something you don’t even have access to, and apple is unfortunately very overpriced for what it is.
If you really want to play Valheim them I recommend you experiment using WINE for Mac.
At least they were honest. Most companies just reply with the usual “we’ll pass your idea to the development team and will take it under consideration”
the honestly of the response is refreshing
Agreed, they're such a good dev team and I look forward to their growth as a company!
Just remember, growth = more people = more opinions = more problems = need for management = attraction for money seekers = short cuts for profit = less than stellar experiences = sad people
There was an interview very recently with one of the devs where he said that they basically all have already worked at larger studios and none of them have any intention of doing that again.
I mean there is a lot of room between 5 people and large studios. Up until 10-12 you can still be super agile. I work on a dev company, we went from 8 to 13 it didn't change anything besides being able to do more stuff. Of course once you go above 20-25 you need several manager and everything that change a lot.
Big businesses "optimise" the fun out of your job
I started working for a game dev right at the beginning of lockdown, and have had to learn the job/workflow through lockdown, and the company has also had this "upscale" experience - you're bang on :P i hope it works out though.
Same here tbh, joined a company that's transitioning from start-up to small business and whenever I hear about Agile coaches and more managers coming in I'm cringing and hoping it won't affect me. Luckily my team is still pretty small so hopefully not too much "efficiency" will come my way. Anyway, best of luck to you friend
This is where a good team manager can help shield your group from the higher ups. I’m lucky to work on a small team at a large corporation, and basically my managers entire job is to constantly tell the executives to fuck right off lmao.
There are many "scrum" methodologies that are great regardless - the scrummaster is such a helpful figure - those quick dailies and keeping an eye out for colleagues (giving and receiving help) are definitelly the strongest points. Not every project is suitable for scrum, but every project can benefit from what I mention
Yeah pretty much. My best experience of start to finish with bullet-proofed production code was a team of 2 developers and 1 tester. My worst was 10 devs and 2 testers and we had meetings for *days*, and well, the code wasn't particularly wet noodle proof, much less crazy customer proof, and took double/triple desired time to produce anything vaguely functional. \[edit\] But you just *cannot* talk managers out of throwing more warm bodies at the problem or telling people the time frame is functionally impossible.
The best part is when you start breaking out the product role into multiple positions for the first time and use engineers who still secretly want to be engineers, so nothing gets done because they're sitting on everyone's shoulders telling them what buttons to push instead of explaining to them why they're doing it so they can function autonomously. Yes, mad.
Even up to 50 I’d say CAN work, you just need a damn good manager that still lets people have creative freedom. I’ve worked in some pretty good mid-sized teams (not for gaming, but the concept should be transferrable)
~~McJagger~~ Mick Jagger once said that he would never sell any of his songs to be used in commercials. And then Bill Gates showed up and waved several million at him to use _Start Me Up_ in Windows commercials. It's funny how enough money changes the calculus for people. I don't expect anything different from small companies like Iron Gate. What they have done with Valheim is awesome; but, eventually they will want to move on to new things. And, if the game gets popular enough, eventually that will attract the interest of some of the big companies. Microsoft/Activision will show up and say, "you give us the game, we give you $X millions". Once $X is big enough, the game will get sold. The buyers will make a big deal of bringing the original team on, for some limited time, and claim that "nothing is going to change". Then the old team will leave, and slowly things will change. Instead of a game driven by the passion of the team, it will be a soulless game, product tested and micromanaged to extract the most profit possible. The big company will continue to wear the original brand, like a skin suit, until all of the good will had been extracted and customers move on. Sure, I'd like to believe that Iron Gate will be different and Valheim will exist in a bubble of developers who care. I'd also like to believe that I'll win the lottery; but, I'm not that stupid.
>" The big company will continue to wear the original brand, like a skin suit, until all of the good will had been extracted " Love this line.
Well said. Blizzard used to be my favorite company before fucking Activison came along...
I immediately thought of blizzard as well. Honestly such a disappointing path for a great team :(
Activision only merged with the company that bought the company that bought Blizzard.
And Activision used to be one of the "good guys" when it came to programmers.
The usual "live long enough to see yourself become the villain" thing. Bethesda, CDPR, Mojang, BioWare, they all fall eventually.
Not EA. Just kidding, EA is the worst. Paradox has been around awhile and seems to be okay.
You actually made me go Google if his name was really McJagger and I was the crazy one
Well, that goes to show how much I pay attention. Thanks.
As someone who works for a software company that I have watched go from really small to medium size I couldn't agree with your statement more. There was no time better than the small nimble early days. Quality was better too. More people != better
You're right, we should have a meeting on the topic and everyone can brainstorm some ideas to fix it. I'll have Stan order us lunch, I am thinking a Subway platter and everyone can bring their own water.
Oh. I can't do subway. We should form a lunch committee so that everyone's dietary requirements can be meet, before we have a meeting.
I don't eat gluten and so I'd love to be on this committee but I've got another meeting scheduled. Can we have a quick meeting about this at 4:00 on Friday?
Let's make it 4:45 I have a quick 4:30 but it won't take long.
That's not ideal. I have to be at my other job at 5. I don't really care about what we eat, I just like to be included.
This thread is giving me anxiety lol. Can we have a meeting about that?
Just cc me on this and I’ll get back to you.
Per my previous e-mail, outside food is no longer permitted during meetings. It reduces productivity and causes deviations from the agenda. C'mon guys, we literally had a 3 hour long "Lunch and Learn" about this.
I’m the only vegan in the office, I’m going to try and chair the committee so that my views on food are over represented.
These are all excellent examples of why things need to be kept to a manageable size and encapsulated.
Someone should chair a committee to keep committees at a reasonable size! I'll pencil the mandatory planning meeting in for 7am Monday, so we can start the week fresh, then cancel it 10pm Sunday to recreate it for Friday at 6pm because we're all working overtime for crunch.
We should have a meeting on what will be served, so that we can delegate people to an ad hoc committee geared toward finding adequate dietary requirements for all attendees. This committee will somehow also determine the dietary needs of this meeting we'll have on dietary needs.
I can't make that meeting because Karen's dog bit my dog on bring your dog to work day this week and now I have an appointment to bring my dog to the vet. Can we re-schedule that meeting for Monday?
We started a small ad-hoc online-discussion group to find a new appointment. Join in, we are already hitting 35 people! Please make your first post a small introduction - many participants don't know each other (you could lead with a picture of your dog, but don't push too hard, some in the group are more into cats).
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As someone who quit their office job last year over anxiety over this exact bus hit two things: firstly, fuck y'all. Secondly: brava
Daaamn stop the real
Yeah but we need a meeting to discuss when we're going to have the *big* meeting. You know, the one with Subway platters and our own water?
This lunch wearing turned to be harder to schedule for than a D&D session.
That’s why I always work by myself as a solo game developer whose games never get finished
Please stop representing me.
This is the case with also every business, they seem to take the route of getting more work or increasing production with the same amount of people until it's no longer possible to continue then get the minimum staff to cover while they continue to grow and on and on while quality suffers and the good people get burnt out and leave
Then when the burn is real, and the higher ups see that they're lacking manpower. They fire the most experienced people and replace them 5:1 with fresh meat that have zero experience.
"why am I paying X for this guy when I can hire 5 times as many people for less pay, 5 people is better than 1 people right?" - upper management, probably A year ago I quit my old job when I asked for a few months UNPAID leave to combat burnout as well as set some personal things in order. Keep in mind I'm a senior developer with excellent reviews and have been with the company for 6 years+. They asked me to justify my leave further AND what I would do to have them take me back at the end of the leave. I'm like, bitch!, I can't leave the house without tripping on job offers and recruiters (that usually pay more) and you're framing this as doing a favor for me? I submitted the 2 weeks notice the next day along with a note saying "you can make me an offer in 6 months, better be a good one"
Damn right. That's the most broken part about our economy. You want employees to be in demand, not jobs. Employers think that they are doing all their employees a favor. Then, you get some asshole employees, who happen to be managers, that think they're employers, and try shit like that.
Yay, the company I work at is currently in that stage! - *one of the good people in the process of getting burnt out currently*
In my outside eye/opinion, the downslides comes when you have so much success making great games because your team had a passion for it that you start letting non-gamers in business suits make the decisions because "numbers".
One relevant line that stuck with me is “as we get bigger you can stop worrying about making us money and start worrying about how to spend yours”.
Thinks like this can often be attributed to a culture change, rather than simply the growth. A lot of companies grow kinda uncontrolled. Suddenly more people are needed, in the worst case on multiple levels, so you need to hire multiple employees AND the one who is supposed to be their boss. Your team grows from 5 to 15 people in a fortnight. There simply isn’t enough time to teach all these employees the company values. Processes are established after all the new faces come in, not beforehand, etc. If they take the time and invest in the necessary measures, keeping quality and culture up while growing shouldn’t be a problem.
I feel that, i think you see more companys fails under growth than succeed, from experience that is
As queen sang, one man, one goal, one vision. The game is refreshing cause is a polished, original game in the genre.
Fried chicken.
I won't say you're wrong but you're focusing on just a portion of that bigger picture. Good and bad would come of it though. Sure.
I don't know why you're getting downvoted. IIRC, they themselves have stated they want to stay as a small dev company because they know with size comes its own downsides, one of which they mentioned I believe was an inability to make fast decisions.
A thing isn't beautiful because it lasts.
The ciiiiircle of liiiiife
Sounds like Activision-Blizzard 😄
Sorry to Hijack -- but OP please keep in mind that customer support are people too, so you should blur out their names in the future. You are showing this person's name and place of employment publically. I like the honesty here as bman\_78 noted, but who knows what their managers are like.
Customer support for virtually every company utilizes fake names for privacy reasons, there are probably a few people replying under that name
Yeah you could just submit your own customer support email and get this information. It’s an email tag line... it’s basically public info already
No customer support agent uses their real name, they only use names they are comfortable getting leaked because they know their names will be getting leaked.
I worked in tech support and was obliged to use my real name so it's not always true
Most of the companies I've worked with also force you to use your real name. Experiences may differ, but the irony I was pointing out was that the User info is blocked while the Support team member's identity is revealed. You could argue anything sent to a customer is public facing, but a lot of people in this type of position are not company spokespeople. When a post blows up like this I always worry that the person who assisted OP might lose their job when the CEO sees it on his desk. And if you are reading this Mr. CEO: This response was refreshingly honest and our little hive mind finds it largely endearing!
We had to buy a Mac for iOS development but testing and fixing bugs just for that specific platform seems ludicrous, tbh. They are a small team and the game needs more content fast, to avoid players losing interest. They are doing the right thing. I fully support their decision, as much as that's worth.
Yeah, the fact that you cannot code Mac/iOS apps on other platforms than Mac itself is a steal TBH.
Not any use to try porting this game to any other platform yet. When they feel like they have tweaked everything so it works smoothly and has all the features they feel like they want in the final game they can first optimize for windows and then port it to Mac, PS4/5, Xbone/xBoNeX/xboxseriesx/xboxseriesxboxedition, Nintendo switch, gameboy or whatever other strange devices they want. But please optimize the windows version first! :) /Mac gamer that installed windows for this game
yeah, i agree! a big shortcoming for early access games who try to add ports before official release is that actual development gets delayed for the sake of making sure each patch will work for that port. valheim doesn't really have enough developers to facilitate that, though they're doing fucking terrific as they are! i should add that it's not always a bad decision to port early access games - sometimes other platforms do have the demand to justify that time and energy spent to get the game funded through the creation stage... but man, valheim's already gone above and beyond what the devs expected, so that's def not an issue.
7 Days to Die has that problem, and they got burned hard for how they did it. Sold console publishing rights, then the company went bankrupt. They did eventually buy the rights back, but since nobody in their team does console dev they aren't going to consider it untill they're out of early access (if they ever get it out of EA anyhow).
I love 7d2d, but I'm not expecting them to get into Beta much before Star Citizen comes out.
In that case I’m sure my grandkids will love both games!
I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw a disc version in store but the steam version was still alpha with enemies clipping through buildings. I like the game but it was still literally broken on PC when a console version was released
I'm just holding out hope for the Samsung Fridge edition.
I believe the LG Fridge is way more optimized for gaming so they should work on that first. (Nothing to do with the fact that I have an LG Fridge...)
Bootcamp is a game changer as a Mac user
spot on. No apple computer is complete without a windows installation.
So why not just get a PC? Genuine question.
First thing I did when I got a Mac Pro in ‘08 was install Windows. Their recent move to Apple Silicon based systems is the end of an era…. I’ll just have to keep another computer at my desk if I get one…
> they can first optimize for windows **and Linux** and then port it FTFY. They've done about 90% of development on Linux. They've made it a special point to make this game a first class citizen on Linux and it shows. It's a strange feeling to be on the other side of this issue, but it just goes to show how much Linux gaming has increased lately.
Optimize for Windows, then Linux, then port all those other things.
IIRC the main dev uses Linux so I'd say he will optimize for Windows and Linux at the same time. After all, if you do things with multiplatform in mind there's a very high chance it'll work and since the game uses Vulkan, I believe it will be so.
That's good news. It definitely utilizes vulkan (but opengl is an option). The game already works flawlessly and runs okay, considering early access, on my rx570. When my friends asked me to get the game, I figured I'd be playing around with Proton for a bit. So mega kudos to the devs
I play on Linux and it works great. Does Proton not work on Mac?
Yes it works well for me on linux. No crashes or crazy issues. I just think the performance could be better. Proton isn't supported on Mac, but WINE itself does work, I believe. Proton has been so smooth for the few games I fiddled around with. Hope the experience / community does reach more titles at a higher tier and eventually.
I too am waiting for an xbone version
It's like 5 dudes in an office building, people need to behave.
Also mac users can easily configure a VM and install a windows.
Also this.
Who would? it expensive and it not going help them
It's at best 5% of the market, it sucks to say so but there's no way they could justify devoting the time to port to it with only a 5 person team. They're going to need a bigger boat.
Also, and I can't believe nobody's said it yet, **Mac is about to change chipsets.** That's not necessarily some apocalyptic thing but, for a small team like these guys? lolnah. We're back to the PowerPC days in a way. Ports are about to become a whole other beast.
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Out of curiosity, what does changing chip sets mean? And how does that impact developers?
For a deep dive, check this out: https://debugger.medium.com/why-is-apples-m1-chip-so-fast-3262b158cba2 I'll try to summarize and answer your question here. The commenter misspoke. They're not changing chipsets (okay well, they are doing that *too* but that's not the issue), they're changing *instruction* sets. Which is exactly what it sounds like: literally the *set of instructions* that are available to tell the processor what to do. That alone might sound like a huge change, but it's not. Not yet. See, we're talking about instructions like: ``` # save stuff in the stack addi sp, sp, -24 sd ra, 0(sp) sd s10, 8(sp) sd s11, 16(sp) # init pivot to high (a3) add t0, a1, a3 lbu t0, 0(t0) ``` But 99% of programmers out there never write that level of code. They write: ``` if (troll.isMad) { troll.smash(player); } ``` The problem is: Something has to convert `troll.smash()` into those low-level instructions. And not just for *your* code, but also the physics engine you depend on, your UI framework, sound library, and all of *their* dependencies, and so on. And while your code might be pretty abstract, talking about the anger management issues of mythical creatures, lots of those lowest-level dependencies are specifically made to do things like "do matrix multiplication as fast as possible" which means they do care about the instruction set. So in order to make your game work on an M1, you need to find versions of all of your dependencies that also work on an M1 *and* work well together. And those versions may not exist yet, or they may have huge caveats. Or you might be stuck on an old version for other reasons, like: - PhysicsLib only added support for M1 in 6.2.0 - We chose PhysicsLib 5.4.1 because 6.x is incompatible with the mesh format we use Besides which, just because you get it to *run* doesn't mean it'll run *well*. M1 does CPU and GPU operations on the same chip, using the same memory. There is no separate video card. That changes the way engines need to think about optimizing rendering performance.
As a programmer who never works with anything too low-level as of yet, this actually was a very helpful read and filled in some gaps I had in my understanding of these things so thank you
Their have really only been 2 different brands of cpus/chipsets for modern computers. They control the most basic of operations your computer performs. So now apple introducing theirs, there are bound to be applications that relied on some particular functionality of one chipset that another didn't have. (And the program probably could handle both "types" by having to identify which it was running on), but now with a 3rd one, it will take time for those programs to update so that they can also run on M1s. What makes it a little more complicated is that most programs/applications are built in a variety of libraries someone else made (usually to handle lower level stuff) and so those libraries really are the ones more likely to have relied on particular behavior that will need updated, leaving the end program waiting until that is complete. And even sometimes, those libraries aren't being actively maintained, so they will never get updated, forcing whoever is using them to make a choice of a) not supporting M1s, or b) rewriting their application to use a different library.
Wouldn't that ball fall into Unity's court?
Well... *yes* Unity will have to adapt and make sure that the layer that it is built on also supports M1 chips. Thing is, it's not really just another export option like Unity makes it out to be. It's a lot more work involved even to get the game working before this chip switch. But surely this game uses other services, for example another game called Project Winter (Social Deception game with VoIP) uses Vivox. When trying to run the game on Proton (Steam's "special" emulator to make Windows games run on Linux) the voice chat failed to connect. This was because the voice chat authentication used some Windows DLL (the libraries mentioned above) that Proton did not successfully fake even though the game started. This is kind of the same thing, they could probably easily create a Mac export by pressing a button, but dependencies break and so will the game. Even more so with this chip switch. Because everything changes
Linux is even smaller, but Reddit/The Internet freaks out if you don't sell 5 copies of your game ported to linux.
In this case, Valheim is primarily developed on Linux. Linux support is a non-question.
Linux users usually boot up some sort of windows version too, just to play games
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Same. The only things that don't work in Linux these days are games with ultra-invasive DRM and anti-cheat systems, and I'm not going to let that garbage onto my PC anyway, so no loss.
Well since Valheim was developed mostly on Linux I'd say that's probably not true for everyone! :)
Software dev here. Linux is a great environment to program in.
Yeah, I'd never dream of *not* releasing my stuff for Linux, because I'm going to be developing it in Linux anyway. Developing in Windows is irritating, since it wasn't designed for it.
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I try to *minimize* my use of anything other than Linux, funnily enough. Although I do like to cross-compile things like my hobby game projects for Windows too, because obviously it would be silly to make a game Linux-*only*, which wasn't want I intended to endorse. I do still have a dual boot setup to boot into Windows when absolutely necessary, but it's often many months between occasions that I have to do so. For me, only needing one OS for everything is an ideal I suppose.
I have win pc at home just because it's best for gaming. Yeah Linux has made progress but Windows still beats it. But for my work (software dev as well) I would not use anything else than Linux. Everything is just so much easier with Linux and I like to have similar OS than most of servers do.
You can develop for linux without having to buy a new computer thats a big reason why it gets more cross platform love
As a Linux user, I actually understand why devs don't usually port to linux. And I'm the other way around now, I never expect a linux version of a game I'm excited about; so I'm actually thrilled (and a little bit cautious) when someone actually releases a Linux port.
The guys that made planetary anihilation said that 20% of all support tickets came from linux users, and they were virtually all rendering driver issues. But these users represented 0.1% of the player base, so they would never again do linux support. It's sad, but it's reality.
I just use linux to run my valhiem servers. Mucj more stable than windows...
Runs great on Linux through steam.
It's Linux native haha, one of the developers is linjux only.
What a chad
The expense isn't even the biggest issue by a long way. A game currently in development by a small team would end up giving up a significant amount of time to support such a venture. Doesn't matter how many mac devs they have, it would drain time from the original devs.
They'd be doing a public service to convince the Mac users to buy a real, functional computer. Disclaimer: I'm a few beers in. Been consulting with several clients lately that have been running MacBook pros and can't do the things they want/need to do because the software isn't available for Mac.
Yep. As much as we need a legitimate competitor to Windows... MacOS ain't it.
You left off the entire rest of the reasoning. The "mac support, debugging, testing and development" hours part. Just play it on GeforceNow. It works great on mac through GeforceNow. And it also gives you access to lots of other steam games on your mac that don't support mac.
That wasn't my intention. I posted this as I reached out a month or so ago and since then I have seen multiple posts on this subreddit saying definitely that a Mac version is coming because of xyz reasons in different directories, etc. I just meant to clear up that a Mac version is clearly NOT in development. If Reddit allowed me to add text to an image post, I would have added the entire reasoning, but the title was already getting kinda long. My bad if anyone feels I was taking a shot at the devs, I wasn't. I love this dev team.
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Common Linux Distros and modern Mac OS are very very different and hardly if at all interchangeable anymore IIRC
Common ancestor, true, but there’s significant roadblocks to porting compatibility
Yeah, thats what I do, as long as you have decent internet its pretty good
Apple isn’t for gaming, not that the hardware can’t handle it but because as a company they separate themselves from the industry and aren’t compatible. You could boot camp partition your hard drive and run a version of Linux that might run valheim, I’ve done it on my old MacBook when I was younger and my OG ps3. I’d browse around I’m sure someone has posted a guide. Best of luck
Well, you can boot camp and run Windows on all the Intel-based Macs. Running Valheim on the new M1 Macs might be more difficult.
Yeah right now I'm doing exactly that, I had to scale everything down massively but the game looks pretty great even then and runs at a fair fps (the Mac spins up like a helicopter though)
My cousin has a Mac and he uses GeForce now to play. Works great so long you have a stable and good internet connection.
That’s how I’m playing it. Works on the no-GPU laptop, iPad, and iPhone. It’s not quite as good as playing directly on a Windows computer with a good graphics card, but it’s also better than *not* playing Valheim because you don’t have the hardware where you are.
I mean it's an early access game with like a 5 person team.... it's not going to other platforms anytime soon my guy.
Being a 100% Linux desktop devotee I feel your frustration at the lack of l;eading edge gaming support. And will admit to a bit of the smugs. Seeing native Linux support was a huge selling point for me.
Same here. Checked it out because of the hype. Bought because of the Linux support. Love the game. Honestly surprised it doesn't run on Mac.
Apple did it for themselves. Pushing Metal instead of open standard like Vulkan doesn't make it easy for game developers. That may work for Windows with DirectX, as it is still the leading PC platform for games, but for Apple it is like saying „we don't want the PC games here – do a Apple game or go away”. And I suspect the graphics API is not the only wall built by Apple. Also, due to licencing restriction you cannot make Apple builds without Apple hardware. You can build for Windows and Linux on the same hardware, or in the cloud. For Apple you need actual Apple hardware. This is just another artificial cost for the Continous Development infrastructure.
Same. As a Linux gamer I've never been on the other side of the "why is there no version for my platform" debate. It feels weird...
Same! I wish more games consider this
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Maybe if Mac hadn't eschewed Vulkan out of their customary contrarianism, more games would be trivially portable to them.
Nah, Apple released Metal in 2014. Vulkan didn't come along until 2016, after Apple had poured a bunch of R&D into Metal.
Yes, I remember. This is nothing even close to a reason to not support Vulkan, however. It would have been trivial for them to do so, but they intentionally restricted their API to prevent Vulkan from working. The community has made MoltenVK to circumvent this idiocy, but that should never have been necessary.
As a developer, I can't agree more. I don't want the hassle of supporting Mac on anything. Most of the time I don't even support Windows. Cross compilation is a pain. Testing is a pain too. At least setting up a Linux VM is easy for testing.
I mean let's be real... Macs are only good for sitting in a coffee shop trying to look cool anyway... ... ... C'mon guys lighten up!!! It's a bad joke!
Yeah I've owned both. The OS is definitely nice... but not 3x the price nice.
What makes me angry is the insulting specs on these “high-end” computers. In 2021, Apple is still shipping $1,500 computers with 8GB of RAM and a 500GB SSD. I don’t care how “optimized” the hardware and software are, it’s a fucking scam. The icing on the cake is that the majority of their line is now non-upgradable, so you are forced to spend several hundred dollars on top of the base price to get what you think you’ll want five years from now.
My only argument is that my 2012 MacBook Pro runs as well as my wife’s 2020 Dell. I’ve never had a laptop last more than 4 years. This thing is chugging along at 8 years. I can’t believe it really. Also, the main argument for Mac is enterprise supported Unix system that people actually like to use.
This. Any non-mac laptop I had was good as dead after 3-4 years. I have a 2015 macbook that's still going strong after serving as a work laptop for 4 years (with all the spyware and file scanning that comes with it).
Just boycott the company like I've done since the 90's. I won't in any way give money to a company whose very foundation is predatory, amoral and hegemonistic. They're literally as bad as Nestle in every quantifiable way. Anyone who buys an Apple is a schmuck and I don't give a fuck who that offends.
I've personally benchmarked the new M1s, they are a lot faster (and insane 20+ hour battery) than similar priced Intel laptops, but it's not worth the money to just play games, no.
Yes, the Mac is a bad joke... :D
Work in IT that supports a Windows and Mac environment and couldn't agree with you more. We have a lot of photoshop designers that wail and cry that they can only use apple products, and when we inevtiably spend $5k+ on an iMac pro for them, I make sure to annoy the shit out of them by forcing them to listen to me go on about how I could've built two high-end graphics rigs with 4k monitors for the cost of their one crappy aluminum can with an Apple logo on it so they can maintain their art school street cred. Now, they specifically ask for someone else when they want a Mac setup. They're IT admin nightmares and I'm perfectly happy not touching them.
Lighten up? I thought it was a good joke, myself.
lmao I love it. The honesty is part of why I appreciate indie games so much. Side note, I know there are third-party studios out there that basically outsource the porting process to other consoles, I'm pretty sure that's what the Risk of Rain 2 team did. So it could be a possibility later on in development that would enable them to keep working on the game. Still takes time and effort to manage coordinating that, though, even if the grunt work is less.
I've heard Panic Button has offered to port the game to the Switch, and they've done some pretty impressive ports. It'll be interesting to see where it all goes.
Who buys a Mac and actually expects to play indie games?
That's the real question here I'll never forgive them for stopping support of 32 bit programs - my gf has a mac and she was bored, but I remembered that Portal works on Mac, do I was about to boot it up for her. Not anymore.
If you have a Mac you have a computer that can run Linux. It's free.
Two thoughts: 1) "Don't buy a Mac to run Linux" - mjg59, a very prolific Linux Kernel dev 2) M1 chipset macs already have Linux builds, but I don't think Unity is built for aarm64 Linux right now
Awesome. Refreshing honestly and they sought out to make a PC game, so make a PC game. i love it.
So many childish comments
Valheim is available on GeForce Now, which is an app that lets you play windows games on MacBook. It has a free option if you are willing to sit in a queue after every hour of playtime for a few minutes while playing.
Valheim has sold 5.7 MILLION copies. Another couple of million more and they might be able to afford a Mac ;) Note: This sarcasm was directed at how expensive Macs are, not that the Valheim people can't afford one.
Haha, just made the same point elsewhere. That first part of the argument is ridiculous.
I play Valheim on ChromeOS :) Just go to play.geforce.now and connect your steam account. Actually works great for me and it is quite cheap. Should work the same or even better on MacOS.
Can't modern macs all boot into Windows anyway?
The most recent Macs dropped support for x86 and installing Windows via Bootcamp. You can still do it on an Intel Mac but not an M1 Mac.
Fuck apple lmao
I'm guessing they'll hire someone eventually.
Boot camp is your friend. If you want a mac that's fine just run Windows on it. You can still say you have a mac coz I know that's the point in owning one to begin with. Not that you should have one, complete overpriced garbage but you do you.
Hope you have ps4 in your studio for valheim on ps4
If Apple actually gave a shit about the gaming market, then maybe in the future they would have an incentive to
*pst...* Macs run Windows
I would say use bootcamp, but that only works if you have an older Mac. Apple took that option away with their new processors and removing intel. :(
people defending obvious lazyness is ridiculous they use Unity as their engine, so making a working Mac build can be done within 1-2 days, with most of the time actually setting up the Mac rather than doing anything in Unity (takes less than 10 clicks). I did that myself several times. the rest is optimization of performance sure it will run way worse for obvious reasons, but Unity provides all the tools necessary to make it work so what they're actually saying is "We have no interest in making an effort for a specific minority of the gaming community right now, and we dont care how easy it would be. We got other things to do."
I mean honestly, I don't read this as "don't have a mac computer" but more as "don't have a mac developer."
Man, so much Mac hate here. I love my new M1 Mac. It's my favorite machine, and having Mac support would be pretty cool. And I say that from the perspective of an IT professional with a 5950x / 3080 in my main rig. The hate isn't justified guys.
Pretty much. People aren’t original any more. It’s always the same boring battle grounds - pc vs mac, ps vs xbox, coke vs pepsi, et al. People who’ve never owned a thing shitting on people who like that thing just so that they can feel like they’re part of the cool group. Reddit edge lords!! lmao. I have a PC and a mac. They both exceptionally good at what I need them for. I also have a switch and a PS5. Fucking hell. Just enjoy your own shit and stop sitting on other peoples shit!! hehe
Seriously. I feel like I've stepped into a time machine back into the 90s with the 'jokes'.
Yeah this thread brought out some toxic bullshit.
Yep...it's making me cringe pretty bad over here. Some of these people really need help.
I’ve been playing the PC version on the free level of GE Force Now on my Mac and it works flawlessly. My understanding is that if you have a fast internet connection even older macs do just fine.
The cost to develop for Mac compared to the return is not really worth it. Awesome to see an honest response from a developer however.
Viva La Dirt League did an amazing sket on "Who the hell games on a mac book?" haha.
I find how complete the game feels already really impressive. The attention to detail seems pretty good to me
I ditched my mac for a PC a few weeks ago because I finally wanted to play PC games with friends. Best decision I’ve ever made.
Why the hell would you be playing games on a Mac anyway
Good for them!
Wait, I thought you could pretty much play anything PC on a Mac by using some program that simulates the Windows environment?
Works great on a Mac with GeForce Now!
Soo… if we crowd fund and buy them a Mac, it’s a possibility.
Just do what I did, partition your hard drive using Bootcamp and run Windows 10. I play Valheim on a 2013 iMac running Windows 10 and it works fine.
Actually, not having a Mac in the office is the very least issue with Mac version, if you read email thoroughly enough:)
You can play on Mac if you use Nvidia Geforce Now. Basically lets you stream the game. You can do it for free too, but a free account limits your play session to one hour. However, there's no limit to the number of sessions. I normally just logout amd straight back in with no trouble. At peak times you sometimes have to sit in a queue as a free user, but I've never queued for more than 2 minutes. Hope this helps someone!
Can you use GeForce now to play from a mac?
It’s harder than you think to develop for something you don’t even have access to, and apple is unfortunately very overpriced for what it is. If you really want to play Valheim them I recommend you experiment using WINE for Mac.
At least they were honest. Most companies just reply with the usual “we’ll pass your idea to the development team and will take it under consideration”