Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General A Disappointment from Mac Users

Condemnation

This delay is a major disappointment for Mac users. We have been waiting patiently for the full release of Baldur's Gate III, and we are now being told that we will have to wait even longer.

This is unacceptable. Mac users are just as much of a gaming community as PC users. We deserve to be treated with the same respect.

Demands

We demand that Larian Studios provide a clear explanation for the delay. We also demand that the company commit to providing a quality Mac port of Baldur's Gate III.

We will not stand for this discrimination. We will continue to speak out until Larian Studios takes action.

Call to Action

If you are a Mac user who is disappointed by the delay of Baldur's Gate III, please join us in speaking out. We can make a difference if we stand together.

Conclusion

Baldur's Gate III is a great game, but the delay of the Mac port is a major disappointment. We demand that Larian Studios provide a clear explanation for the delay and commit to providing a quality Mac port.

I don't think it's really that difficult to explain: cross platform development is hard, time consuming, and expensive, you often find yourself encountering bugs that you didn't anticipate and they can take significant development effort to fix. These can show up late in development and require major efforts to fix. This is true of any cross platform development but especially video games. When you have limited development resources, you have to prioritize where you allocate them for fixing issues and sometimes you only have a few people that know how to remediate problems in various areas of the code. So you have limited resources to chase down and fix bugs in code that may impact the 4 platforms currently in development, which means you then have to re-test all platforms again after you change things.

So where do you prioritize? Fixing bugs in the currently released Windows version? The (at the time) up and coming PS5 release? The OS X version? If you were a program manager, honestly ask yourself which of those 3 would be the bigger priority.

It's not like the game for Windows came out bug free, either. I've put in over 200 hours since August 3rd and have had hundreds of crashes, numerous dialogue problems, scripting issues, broken quests, on top of the issues that were well publicized. The game was clearly rushed out the door with bugs and issues that should have been identified or fixed earlier in development. I'd expect it to be even worse if they were trying to rush all of the platforms out the door to meet a certain release date. The reality is this game should have been released in October after more testing/patching, with other platforms following later.

Also, you aren't being discriminated against, being a Mac user isn't part of your identity and it isn't a protected class. There are technical reasons why this happens and there isn't much that can be done about that, engineers/devs/PMs tend to underscope the amount of work required and that's how you end up with situations of this nature, but it's not discrimination. Being a developer myself, I can assure you getting this port off their back to focus on fixing bugs and other issues is something I'm sure they'd like to do, but there are likely bigger issues at play. I do agree the lack of communication is poor, though.

I think you're both a bit wide of the mark.

• Claiming to be discriminated against (come on, really?) and demanding action is childish and ridiculous.
• Claiming that cross-platform development is so hard that's it's ok to mislead Mac customers into purchasing early, only to compound it with inconsistent, vague messaging is equally unacceptable (I know you ended with that, to be fair!)

I purchased the game back in August on Steam because, back then - as now! - it claimed to be released on Mac. I had the option of waiting for the PS5 release but thought I didn't need to. It was only when I ran the game and was confronted with the "early September" message that I realised I'd made a mistake. But so what? I had no problem waiting and it appeared that the Mac and PS5 releases would coincide so I was neither losing nor gaining anything. Fast forward to today and there is no release date in sight, and I could be playing now on my PS5. Naturally, Steam won't refund my purchase.

This is mostly a criticism of Steam but Larian doesn't come out of this well, either. The game still teases an early September release and, more than a quarter into the month, that's stretching the definition of "early September" somewhat. All we have is a Twitter post to tell us that it's now "later this month" but the fact that they can't share a date tells me that there's a problem - their project management system (whatever that might be) would certainly be suggesting a date unless there was a critical path activity with an unknown duration.

To Steam, sort out your false advertising. I've been a customer of yours for 17 years and I'm really disappointed in your actions. If you were in the UK you'd be toast.
To Larian, please, at least update the in-game message to coincide with the Tweet - if we can't get a straight answer, please at least give us a consistent, vague one. And please tell Steam to change their messaging!

It isn't necessarily misleading and I never claimed it would be ok to do so. My point was that things happen you can't always foresee and sometimes it shows up late in development. In software engineering, things work great until they don't. Once again, there could be a number of technical reasons why it is delayed or pushed off, particularly in cross platform code where one bug can result in a cascading series of changes that need to be made.

There have been plenty of bugs in the Windows version, no doubt there are others in the other ports as well, and fixing them is not always trivial. It's likely or possible that development was going smoothly until some issues were identified late in development, but couldn't be fixed in time. It's only misleading if they never started the port to begin with or never intended on releasing it, sometimes you just encounter things that you don't expect and fixing them isn't as easy as you think they'd be. This again comes to underscoping, something that happens constantly in development, but it's not always your fault when there are architectural limitations or other issues you didn't foresee early on.

Agree on the lack of communication and messaging, though.

They said later this month. If they release earlier than that, you’re probably not getting a “quality” port, and instead one riddled with bugs.

I get that you’re mad, but unexpected things that slow projects down happen all the time, and you should stop making multiple posts to complain about this and stick to one thread.

How about Larian making a MacOS thread with updates? It's hard to stick to one thread when there isn't one dedicated to MacOS, and more importantly, we feel unheard.

You need to see that Mac users want updates and transparency. We got none of that throughout the process. Many of us bought this game on Steam, thinking it was the full release because neither the store nor Larian stated otherwise. Even their Mac page never mentions its in early release: https://larian.com/support/faqs/macos-information_57. Their page even says it's available on Steam... ON THEIR OWN MAC INFO PAGE!

So yeah, we are a little irate that we paid for something and still have yet to get it after two months of its official release. We were misled into thinking we were getting a full game back on August 3rd to have the rug pulled out from under us and to have misleading promises throughout. If Larian had announced at the beginning that this was the case, then we would be okay. If Larian would have updated Mac users, we would have been okay.

I agree there needs to be a specific thread for consoles.

But Mac Support is being added in tomorrow's patch

https://www.videogameschronicle.com...d-full-mac-support-are-coming-next-week/

It may be delayed because it's a huge patch. But you always have to keep in mind forums are not used for their intended purpose LOL! It's to constantly whinge about what's not in the game. And to attack, spam, flame and troll others for having a different opinion.

So I understand your frustration with me was not able to change my character looks mid the game :X I had probably restarted between 40-50 times because at first you couldn't change your class and then hairstyle, voice, etc. and trust me when you have re-played Act 1 you the player can quote verbatim the dialogue of the entire game. It gets old very FLIPPING fast :X

I think he meant on here *rolls their eyes*
I have been on the Steam Forums and never again LOL!

I would say, with a vague statement like this from the CEO, that BG3 for MacOS and Patch 3 will be delayed again: https://x.com/LarAtLarian/status/1704807658706887066?s=20

Meh....it'll be out when it's out. Until then. I'm going outside to play. Haha!

STRONG CONDEMNATION!

What is vague about that? It is as clear as it can be IMO. They are in the final round of QA and if everything passes there, they will release tomorrow(now today). I can't see how they can be clearer. Let's just hopes they pass QA and can release today!

I have been playing through Whiskey on Mac for two weeks now and I just finished Act 2 so this is great timing for me. I heard that there might be some performance issues in Act 3 with Whiskey and if this also fix some of the Act 3 bugs I would be very happy. I hope I can continue that save without any issues.

It looks like it is confirmed to be released today!

https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=900945

Say Hi to the ugly face of entitlement Spoiler alert, you are not entitled to anything and if I would be in Larians place, after that post I'd move BG3 to 2026 on Mac and build a PC/Console exclusive expansion in the mean time