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Comment by azhenley | Hacker News Reader

> As we continue to upgrade Rocket League with new technologies, it is no longer viable for us to maintain support for the macOS and Linux

Any idea which specific technologies they are referring to?

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Certainly PR speak. They just don’t want to maintain support for the platforms anymore due to their ROI.

Devil's advocate here: if it has a low ROI why should they?

Because they made a commitment when they sold the game to Linux users who bought it for the online multiplayer.

Just because a game is available for a platform doesn't mean that it will always be supported for that platform. That's like people complaining that the Wii U version of a multiplatform online game isn't getting patches anymore. Yeah, that sucks, but you're making a mistake if you think a platform will be supported indefinitely.

Not saying they should at all. Why pay to maintain a product line that isn’t financially viable?

Yes, it's most likely that the effort it takes ($) to develop and maintain vs. the direct revenue it provides is abysmal.

Most likely stuff like DirectX 12, or third-party middleware without viable MacOS or Linux support.

The deprecation of OpenGL on MacOS is another barrier for that platform - you either have to buy GL-on-Metal middleware from someone or write a new Metal renderer. If the % of customers on Mac is small enough I can understand just opting to drop that platform.

Hard to say re:Linux, though. Maybe they get more customer service burden out of maintaining Linux support than they do revenue. It's common to hear that from indie game developers, though some developers say the opposite.

EDIT: Also just occurred to me that Valve's ongoing Proton efforts have resulted in Windows Rocket League working okay on Linux: https://www.protondb.com/app/252950 As a result the devs may have decided it's better to just leave Linux to third parties. Some of the reviews claim Windows-via-Proton is faster than the official Linux port!

It'll work, but anti-cheat software can easily mistake the emulated Linux environment to be a tampered Windows environment and flag your account.

It'll work for a while, probably, but there's no way to know how long and if/when you risk an account wide ban.

Funnily enough Rocket League still uses DirectX 9. Do you ever see them upgrading to anything newer?

I can confirm our runs better via proton on my Dell latitude laptop.

Apple deprecated OpenGL and doesn't support Vulkan

There's always moltenVK. I can't seem to find anything that's made with it though.

The Dolphin emulator uses it. I think some of the recent Valve games do too.

I beleive Dota 2 uses MoltenVK.

Which aren't also supported by either PS 4 and XBox.

Epic Games Store.

EGS supports macOS, so that's unlikely to be the reason.

It does seem kind of vague, though Apple is depreciating OpenGL (not sure if that is required by Rocket League).

>Any idea which specific technologies they are referring to?

The epic games store.

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