Missing Mac Ports

[Le Pertti]

Something I've noticed is that there are several games on Steam that lack a mac port even though the game is out on Mac app store. I wonder if anyone has ideas as to why?

[Cathulhu]

Ask the publisher/developer of the game.
Often such ports are done by a third party like Feral Interactive and they decide where to publish their ports unless they are contractually obligated to release them on the same platforms as the original game.

[AyaneFuji]

This mainly has to do with publisher agreements that prevent this from happening. For example, quite a few Apple Arcade games are on Steam, but many of them are PC-only.

[Le Pertti]

But why would a publisher not want the mac port on Steam? Have hard time imagining any agreement prohibits a mac port from being on Steam?

[cocanard]

引用自 Le Pertti：

But why would a publisher not want the mac port on Steam? Have hard time imagining any agreement prohibits a mac port from being on Steam?

Since most mac ports that are exclusive to the MAS are showcased at WWDC, it is most likely that Apple is paying companies to encourage the ports of their games, and I imagine they want them to publish their games on the mac app store in order to get the 30% of the game revenues that would otherwise goes to Valve if it was on steam.
Perhaps there are other things that cause some games to be steam only but that's the most obvious answer.

Same for apple arcade, there is a high chance that Apple asks devs that publish games on apple arcade to make it apple arcade exclusive (except if the game was already ported to mac which happens sometimes)

[brr_lauty]

x

[Le Pertti]

So if there is some kind of deal going on that makes the Mac ports exclusive to the app store, then I wonder why? Apple has nothing to loose(except the 30%) and everything to gain to make Mac be a bigger presence on Steam. The more people that game on Macs the more people there will be to buy from the Mac App store.

[cocanard]

引用自 Le Pertti：

So if there is some kind of deal going on that makes the Mac ports exclusive to the app store, then I wonder why? Apple has nothing to loose(except the 30%) and everything to gain to make Mac be a bigger presence on Steam. The more people that game on Macs the more people there will be to buy from the Mac App store.

I don't know for sure but there could be a few reasons for apple to require devs to port their game for mac exclusively on MAS :
-They might want to do the same as on iPhone : everything is on their app store, this might allow a few features like having the same app available for iphone and iPad as a single purchase (this will be the case for RE4 for example).
-They might want to make the Mac App Store more attractive (which seems logical with what I first said) with interesting titles that are only available there, this also require customers to always use their mac to play their games as MAS is not cross platform (outside of Apple ecosystem at least).
-Back to the argument I gave to my previous post : before everything else, apple is a company which is searching for making profits, paying other companies to port their games to mac has a cost, and they most likely want to see a financial result in their investment.

In general over the past few years, Apple has seemed more interested into gaming for mac, but they don't really seems to be interested doing it the way customers would like to (cross platform titles available on biggest stores)

Again, those are only hypothesis, there might be other reasons and some things I have said might not be true.

[Le Pertti]

I understand that Apple Arcade have Apple funding and thus can be exclusive but there are many that dont seem to have Apple funding that dont come to Steam. But I doubt Apple pays for any porting unless it is for Apple Arcade. Or maybe in a bigger promotional thing like maybe with Capcom for Resident Evil.

Then there are cases like Elex 2 for example, my understanding is that its a different porting studio within the publisher that handles Mac and thus only takes care of that part.