Mac Closure Notice

yetweallfalldown

Hi Captains,

We wanted to come back to follow up on where we currently are with the Mac version of Star Trek Online. As some of you are aware, we had issues in the recent past that affected our players from launching the client and playing Star Trek Online. We were able to work with our partners to bring the game back up and deliver all the previously available promotions that were unattainable by those players.

Following these issues, we looked at our Mac support overall and determined that we cannot promise to deliver an experience on Mac that meets our expectations of quality. After heavy consideration, we have decided to end support for the Mac version of Star Trek Online on February 5th. No other version of Star Trek Online is impacted.

Here are some important notes as we shut down Mac support:

• The Mac client will be unavailable for download starting on February 5th.
• Anyone with an existing Mac client will be able to play, but the game will become permanently unavailable via our mac client by Spring of this year.
• We will be shutting off C-Store for all Mac users to prevent players from continuing to make purchases before it permanently shuts down.
• We will be processing reimbursements and refunds over the next few weeks.
  • We will be canceling and refunding any active recurring subscriptions purchased between October 1, 2015 and today, including Lifetime Subscriptions. If a payment was made other than a credit card or Paypal, the value of the subscription will be reimbursed to your Arc Account Balance.
  • We will be reimbursing any Zen that was purchased through Arc or Steam between October 1, 2015 and today to your Arc Account Balance.
  • We will be reimbursing the value of any Packs purchased through Arc or Steam between October 1, 2015 and today to your Arc Account Balance.

For those looking ton continue to play our game after we shut down the Mac client, we would recommend using any of the popular programs to simulate a windows environment on your Mac, including the free software Wine.

We appreciate all the Mac Captains who have flown through the galaxy with us since 2014.

Perfect World Entertainment


If you have any questions regarding your accounts or subscriptions, please contact our support team through https://support.arcgames.com/

khan5000

primar13

Thank you for Making Refunds Available. That should ease the Sting of this for most players.

minmacdougal

Here's some food-for-thought: Mac would be a great operating system overall if it wasn't for Steve Job's paranoia and forcing the platform on hardware that is proprietary and subpar. It's a shame that this has to be done, but with everything being so severely closed-source I can understand the move behind it.

mustrumridcully0

Is the reimbursement process automatically happening? I mean how do you know who is a Mac-user only and can not use the game anymore at all, and someone that might keep playing on PC?

afb2008

OMG!!
You're killing my favorite game!!
Will my account keep all my ships, inventory etc until I have installed a windows wine client?
How do I do that?
OMG!

minmacdougal

afb2008 wrote: »

OMG!!
You're killing my favorite game!!
Will my account keep all my ships, inventory etc until I have installed a windows wine client?
How do I do that?
OMG!

Everything will still be there when you log back in.
Not really sure if light-hearted trolling or just plain dumb.

captaincelestial

afb2008 wrote: »

OMG!!
You're killing my favorite game!!
Will my account keep all my ships, inventory etc until I have installed a windows wine client?
How do I do that?
OMG!

I believe that you're account will be ok, it's just that you'll have to download the Windows version of the updater to your computer and use Wine to use that updater.

guljarol

I play the game on Linux through Wine (currently the 1.8 version), and it works fine, and is playable. In fact, on 1.8 it works better than in earlier version I used. May crash sometimes, and you probably need to set your graphics to low and lowest, but it's not the end of the road for MAC users, if they want to keep playing. ​​

hyugh2

While this is slightly disappointing, it's not terribly surprising. The Mac version of STO has been quite a struggle recently, with constant crashes.

That being said, it can be run via Wine pretty effectively (and to be honest, I've had better luck keeping a game running with Wine than with the Transgaming official version). Alternatively, anyone who wants to pony up the money for VMware Fusion (although that product is now in a bit of limbo, so maybe not) or Parallels Desktop could still run the game, although the system resources required will increase. Probably not ideal for MacBooks.

With Steam In-Home Streaming being so good, I find myself running it off a PC more often than anything else, and that works great.

Thanks for at least trying a Mac version, and I hope at some point in the future you can return to it.

pwlaughingtrendy

If you have any questions regarding your accounts or subscriptions, please contact our support team through https://support.arcgames.com/

warpaint21

Been meaning to update myself in the computer world and this looks like a good time to do so. Been running the game on integrated Intel graphics for awhile.

afb2008

can you please provide a how-to- for MAC users to switch to wine & and Windows client??

aaaict

This is, despite being understandable, incredibly disappointing and infuriating. As a Mac customer since the client launch, having gone through all the downs on the client, and the associated frustration, anger and lack of communication, this is highly insulting and it makes me very angry that Cryptic/PWE have finally just given up.
On the other hand, I understand that they don't want to offer a terrible service to customers, that has been ridden with problems and is not turning them a profit I guess. Well, instead of an occasionally broken game, I've now got no game at all until I get some sort of wine program. Thanks Cryptic/PWE and well done.

jc1240

minmacdougal wrote: »

Here's some food-for-thought: Mac would be a great operating system overall if it wasn't for Steve Job's paranoia and forcing the platform on hardware that is proprietary and subpar. It's a shame that this has to be done, but with everything being so severely closed-source I can understand the move behind it.

Games run fine on Mac (at least iMac - I can see problem on the Mac Mini) if developers would actually DEVELOP them natively. I've been running the Mac client crash-free for at least a month after some tweaks I made to the game). The tweaks I made are from https://www.reddit.com/r/sto/comments/2tjsmh/osx_users_are_you_tired_of_all_the_crashing_well/ with my video RAM setting at 512 (I have 1024 MB total in video RAM)

nebfab

Is Linux (and Wine in general) support affected by this? (since as far as I know it partly relies on some mac-related stuff in the code...)

guljarol

nebfab wrote: »

Is Linux support affected by this? (since as far as I know it partly relies on some mac-related stuff in the code...)

There ever was Linux support? O.o​​

dalolorn

Soooo... Mac support has joined Saturday's Child?

(Sorry, couldn't resist.)

nebfab

guljarol wrote: »

nebfab wrote: »

Is Linux support affected by this? (since as far as I know it partly relies on some mac-related stuff in the code...)

There ever was Linux support? O.o​​

"Compatibility," if you insist.

eighrichte

Official support for my platform has always been a requirement for me to play a game. The introduction of the official Mac client is what brought me over to STO from WoW. So I guess this is it for me. Which sucks, because I've really been loving the game, even with my old Mini's very sad graphic, and I had JUST got my Annorax set up nicely.

farmallm

This isn't good, as I love using Mac computers. However I always used Bootcamp on mine. And that is how I play STO. Just most game makers just can't seem to make it work on Macs or just don't have the resources to do it. However some game companies has no issues making it work.

Even though I'm pass due on a new computer. I still get a Mac with Bootcamp. As there still a lot of stuff where companies don't care to make it work on Mac or have the reasources.

goodscotch

Take that Apple! - This message brought to you by Microsoft and BlackBerry.

johnnyray14

I sincerely feel for the Mac-only users who will need to spend time and money to migrate to PC in order to keep playing. But I can also see from Cryptic's perspective that it makes good business sense to drop support for the Mac---and not in a money-hungry way, just a common sense way (WAY too much time and money needed to develop for Mac, and no hope for profit there). I'm glad that there will no doubt be tons of STO players here in the forums helping Mac people transition to PC, and your efforts will be appreciated! Thanks Cryptic for offering refunds, to help ease the pain.

farmallm

johnnyray14#4257 wrote: »

I sincerely feel for the Mac-only users who will need to spend time and money to migrate to PC in order to keep playing. But I can also see from Cryptic's perspective that it makes good business sense to drop support for the Mac---and not in a money-hungry way, just a common sense way (WAY too much time and money needed to develop for Mac, and no hope for profit there). I'm glad that there will no doubt be tons of STO players here in the forums helping Mac people transition to PC, and your efforts will be appreciated! Thanks Cryptic for offering refunds, to help ease the pain.

I don't need to migrate to PC, I use bootcamp. Its no more than just restarting your computer. And give it a few mins. And I'm playing.

psycoticvulcan

The wine version always worked better for me anyway. :P

Thanks for the heads-up, and for the refunds. Not that I'll be needing them.

johnnyray14

farmallm wrote: »

I don't migrate to PC, I use bootcamp. Its no more than just restarting your computer. And give it a few mins. And I'm playing.

Oh yeah, I forgot about Wine. Laughingtrendy even mentioned it, duh . I have no experience with it myself, but if that provides a free transition, great! I'm just curious how complicated/problematic it is, for the non-computer-geeks among us.

farmallm

goodscotch wrote: »

Take that Apple! - This message brought to you by Microsoft and BlackBerry.

Take that Windows! This message is brought to you a Mac user with dual OS.

farmallm

minmacdougal wrote: »

Here's some food-for-thought: Mac would be a great operating system overall if it wasn't for Steve Job's paranoia and forcing the platform on hardware that is proprietary and subpar. It's a shame that this has to be done, but with everything being so severely closed-source I can understand the move behind it.

Nope, Windows is Subpar due to easily hackers, worms, virus, and other bad stuff to ruin your day. This was the reason why I went to Mac. I don't need any protection, hadn't ran any since the early 2000s.

Don't forget that famous OS Windows came out with. So bad that the customers was "upgrading" to older software cause it was more reliable.

flyingdiesel

Excuse me, - quick question - "this platform is no longer supported," anything else on the support "chopping block?"

thescottyb

minmacdougal wrote: »

Here's some food-for-thought: Mac would be a great operating system overall if it wasn't for Steve Job's paranoia and forcing the platform on hardware that is proprietary and subpar. It's a shame that this has to be done, but with everything being so severely closed-source I can understand the move behind it.

Hardware hasn't been an issue since 2005 when Apple stopped using IBM's PowerPC processors. Modern Macs have the same internals as a Lenovo or HP - oftentimes first-to-market with Intel's latest processors, too. This is the entire reason WINE-based ports (such as the Transgaming/CIDER-based port STO used) are even possible. Macs also use the same GPUs as other PC manufacturers' gaming laptops or All-In-One desktops - the reason Tomb Raider can be released with a native Mac port that runs at 4K on my iMac. (Also the reason I was able to play Unreal Tournament 2003 on a PowerBook over 10 years ago. It might not have had an Intel processor, but it still had a Radeon X1900M.)

DirectX, which is what most games are developed to render with, is Microsoft's proprietary, closed-source API. But since Microsoft is a business, they can provide technical and marketing support and guarantee that a product will run on Windows/Xbox. OpenGL, used on Mac and Linux, is open-source, but managed by a non-profit standards organization. When it comes to mainstream games from traditional publishers they benefit more from big players with self-interest, than from open-source idealism.

However, this hasn't prevented Epic from making Unreal Engine capable of building for both Windows and OS X, and the Unreal Editor itself can run natively on Mac now. Unity has been like this since at least v3. Prior to being bought by ZeniMax, id always made Linux versions of their idTech engine/games, and in the early 2000s when OS X was released, they also were able to make native Mac ports as well since OS X is a certified Unix system.

Ultimately, the reason "only" one-third of Steam's library is available on Mac is because historically games haven't been marketed to Mac users. There's no market, so they don't develop for it, so there's no market. The combination of Valve's cross-platform push and the recent popularity of indie games (often using open-source engines for simultaneous Windows/Mac/Linux building) can be largely credited for leading the way for more traditional publishers to invest in porting companies like Feral Interactive and Aspyr to port their AAA titles.

With that said, STO is an un-portable beast. As an MMO, minimizing performance overhead has probably led to taking a lot of shortcuts targeting Windows. It's based on a proprietary engine that only the Cryptic devs have seen, over the course of more than a decade. There is no reasonable way to natively port such a thing. Cryptic devs would be gods among coders if they attempt (and succeed) at such a feat.

For anyone still reading and interested in more history:

The first Mac came out when there were dozens of computer platforms. It hadn't coalesced into Mac vs. (IBM) PC yet. Apple used the Motorola 68k processors, and IBM used Intel's x86 processors; there were still other CPUs out there, and more OSes to run on them, although by the late 80s home computing was pretty much down to Apple or IBM-PC-compatible. Apple switched to the PowerPC processor (developed by an alliance of Motorola and IBM) well after Steve Jobs had been ousted from Apple. Steve was then working on NEXT, based on Unix, and many design concepts from it form the basis of OS X today. Steve was responsible for the switch in hardware and software platforms following his return, which has arguably made the Mac easier to develop for.

eighrichte

I would be awesome if a thread about Macs could exist without reviving a 30-year-old platform war.

I prefer to use Macs for my own reasons. They are good reasons for me; I've been at this for a very long time, long enough to remember when the war was between IBM and the Apple ][. Other people make different choices, and that's perfectly cool.

I choose to support games with official Mac clients because that's the only way I have to encourage Mac game developers. I want to encourage Mac game developers because native games give me a better experience, and even when their client isn't native, I don't want to have to reboot to switch from the game to the other stuff I do with the machine, and I don't want to dedicate disk space to an operating system I don't use.

So for me, this is about more than just being able to play one game, even if it is a good game and I appreciate the people who work on it. I don't expect others to make the same decision, or even to understand or care about the decision.