Paradox's strategy regarding Apple's transition to "Apple Silicon" (ARM) Macs

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Harcker

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Mar 12, 2020
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Disclaimer: I know that I won't be handed Paradox's overall strategy in a simple forum post, but rather I'm looking for already announced tidbits and possibly some kind of official clearance on the following:

With Apple's announcement of transitioning the Mac from Intel to their custom Apple Silicon (ARM) CPUs, I have a few questions:
  1. Will Paradox continue to support the Mac for future (and current) games?
  2. Will the most recent games like Imperator Rome and CK 3 be ported to run natively on Apple Silicon Macs?
  3. Will "older" games like EU4, Stellaris, Prison Arch. etc. be ported to run natively on ARM? Or will these games solely rely on Apple's Rosetta 2 (X86-64 emulation)?
  4. Will future versions of your games/engines run natively using Metal?


If Paradox haven't already started considering the above, I hope this post/thread will spark a light on the issue.


EDIT:
I'm looking for clearance on the above due to the fact that I'm considering buying an ARM Mac in the near future, which could lead to a useless Steam Library, so a little assurance on the above question would make me less considerate of buying yet another DLC/game.
 
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That would depend on the wilingness of PDX to partner up with a studio that would do ports and the terms of such a contract. Taking Vic2 for example, once OSX pulled x86 support, Vic2 dropped from the store as it'd no longer run nativelly, and PDX can't/won't do anything about it as the port was done by a third party. It's now legacy/unsupported precisely because of a reason you're describing, and I sure can envision in 10 years the same thing happening again and all current ports losing support.

This isn't the first time Apple pulled the rug either (it's what, 3rd?) and did a complete architectural curve.
 
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Apple went from the Motorola 68000 processor to the Power PC processor, then to the Intel, and now it's switching to an ARM chip. None of those are compatible, code-wise. Basically, if you bought a PC, you could "upgrade" it after a few years (replacing the main board is a pretty serious upgrade, but possible), and a lot of your old software would still run in "compatibility mode" or in a DOS window. With a Mac, you have no choice but to buy a new computer and all new versions of the software, because it's just not compatible with their previous models and OS.

I used to joke that I was still using my original PC from the early 1980s, but that everything had been upgraded (several times) except the power cord. Unfortunately, after 35+ years, the old power cord's insulation got brittle and started to crack, and I had to replace that too. Therefore, I can no longer call it my "original" system.
 
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I am hoping they will make Crusader Kings 3 run natively with the M1 as I just bought the new Mac Mini
 
I’m curious about this too. But given that it is going to be running the Mac OS version I don’t hold out much hope at least for EU4 it runs abysmal on the iMac with a 10700k i7. Assuming you take into account the increased single core performance id guess it’s gonna have some increase in performance at speed 5 not sure how much. Would be tempted but multiplayer through Mac seems to cause desync for me so it’s out.
 
Are you running it now? If so, how does it perform? Very interested in this as I need a new laptop soon and hope the M1 will make CK3 a realistic option.
Nope. I'm still waiting for Apple to manufacture the Mac mini. It's planed to be shipped in December.
 
Ah- thought they were shipping already. My mistake.
Yup. They are shipping. But the demand outstrips the production capacity. If you were to order right now from Apple you’d get around Christmas
 
I have been playing on an a new Mac mini (M1), it plays just fine, can't even tell if the fan is running. Though note, the Achievements don't work as the Checksum seems to be different because of the emulation. I don't have and mods or anything installed and I see the Gabversion: Argent (1.2.1) with a Checksum of b343. Which seems to be modified.
 
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I have the Mac mini (M1) and can confirm that Stellaris plays brilliantly on it (although I haven't seen the late game yet, which typically slows down the simulation)
 
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Have you tried CK3?
 
This is very important to me too. It’s great to be able to run Paradox Games through Rosetta 2 and the fact that they run better than on Intel Macs is a testament of how powerful the M1 is, but this is not going to last.

Paradox needs to decide wether they will move to Metal, because if they wont, the next macOS release will most likely drop OpenGL support (which has been trash for years now), and we can say goodbye to the games on mac. Maybe a Vulkan pipeline with MoltenVK.

This is what‘s daring about the task to move to M1. M1 is plenty powerful for most Paradox Games, the ARM transition is probably the easier task too. Metal is the culprit, although it would add so much in terms of performance. Right now I am running all Paradox Games in bootcamp because the performance on mac is abysmal thanks to the ancient OpenGL macOS ships with.
 
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Is there any official announcement from Paradox regarding this question? It’s been almost a year since Apple announced his new processor.
Does anyone know something?

Thanks :)
 
I hope Victoria 3 runs natively on M1
 
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