A Steam community dedicated to Apple M1 and Mac games

ince the release of Max Payne 3 on June 20th, the Rockstar forums & Twitter have been littered with players experiencing technical issues with TransGaming’s Cider port of the title. The problem is, these aren’t just isolated incidents. The problems appear to be widespread, with a range of issues going from controller key bindings not responding, screen tearing, corrupt save files and being able to view skeletal meshes within environments during gameplay. How the hell that last one has happened, I will never know. How the game was allowed to get through TransGaming’s own QA in this state is beyond me. Something as silly and simple as making sure the controllers work really is poor and reeks of laziness.

If you are experiencing technical issues (freezing, blackouts), our very own Jon Carr put together a short video (link below) with some quick fixes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9eCqBmsmG60

This isn’t the first time games ported with Cider have suffered problems when launched. Other examples being Prince of Persia, Psyconauts and Settlers 7. They all suffered the same fate.

The whole launch of the game has frankly been a mess, with Rockstar putting out a press release on their website the day before the game was due, followed up with a solitary Tweet. They failed to mention the game has Steam Play functionality and cross platform multiplayer. Amazingly enough, TransGaming supported the release with even less enthusiasm by posting a press release on their website a day after the game was made available, followed up again with a few half arsed Tweets, thanks Vikas Gupta.

Most of the Mac gaming community knew Max Payne 3 was coming after it appeared in the Steam database back in February. So why the secrecy? Don’t you want to sell copies of the game?

In the Mac Community we are used to TransGaming being elusive and not saying much about potential releases of games and when they do it’s all corporate speak, but I expect better from a huge developer like Rockstar. This is meant to be a Triple A game coming to the Mac, something you build hype around with the use of Facebook and Twitter. You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on YouTube ads or expensive marketing campaigns. Put out regular posts on your website, Tweet and Facebook about the game. Release a new trailer specifically for the Mac, tell news outlets about it. All that stuff doesn’t cost much. This isn’t rocket science, it’s marketing 101.

The fact I have personally experienced some of these issues makes it even more infuriating. I want to be able to sit back, relax with my controller and play the game and not have to wait for a patch which we still know nothing about.

The simple fix for now would be for TransGaming to come out, address that there is an issue with the game and let us know that they are working on a fix. I have said it a million times before, we are a patient bunch in the Mac community, just be open with us.