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Comment by rileytg | Hacker News Reader

Out of curiosity, why not release for mac if its made with godot?

We don't have a Mac and couldn't justify the cost of getting one for now. It's not just Godot, we also have to compile the C++ gdextension and we also want to only release on platforms we have actually tested the game on. (That's why there is DualSense support, but not DualShock. In theory it should work, but we couldn't verify it.)

With the source code DLC it should be possible to compile everything for a Mac regardless, even if it's a bit of work. If we make enough money from the game, we might reinvest it into a Mac. :)

According to PirateSoftware (who makes Heartbound), just compiling the game for Max is going to cost you at least $1000 (Mac Mini + XCode license + time)

The number of sales is, however, negligeable - Mac has just 1.38% Steam users

PirateSoftware told [1] that the Mac was 0.02% of their sales - one in 5000 sales (and thus he dropped Mac support)

Don't reinvest in Mac for sales before you do the math.

If you just want a Mac, get a Mac. If you don't want a Mac, don't bother

[1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qRQX9fgrI4s

Thank you for the additional confirmation. We have seen the same stats, which is why we didn't buy a Mac so far. We could build it on GitHub actions, but we wouldn't be able to test it that way. However, depending on the game, the target audience may have a higher percentage of Macs. BlockBawks, our upcoming game, may have a disproportionately higher number of Mac users who are interested in the game because it's dealing with a programming topic. Ultimately, I'm afraid you may just be right and getting a Mac Mini may not be worth it.

I run into this dilemma a lot, not even for profitability.

I would happily test my software on macOS and Safari, but I'm not paying for that privilege. So a lot of my stuff just doesn't work. But Windows, Edge (and previously IE) and Chrome and Linux are all easy to test on so I do even though personally I only use Linux and Firefox.

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