MacOS – Is it legal to use WINE to play PC games on Mac

gamesmacoswine

I've always been a Mac fan and the way game developers treat Mac users is just sad.

No big games (with the exception of Portal 2 and Starcraft 2) have been released for Mac this far. I've always been into gaming, but playing Starcraft 2 over and over gets really boring once you think about all the possibilities you would have if Mac ran Windows games natively.

I know there are several ways to play Windows games on a Mac.

  1. You use Boot Camp on your Mac to run Windows. The problem here is: Should I buy a Mac just to install Windows on it? (I believe you have to own a copy of Windows, too which costs additional money as well.)

  2. You buy Parallels Desktop (costs money!) which doesn't require you to reboot your Mac every time you want to use Windows. This program also requires you to have a copy of Windows (money!).

  3. You can install custom "wrappers" which allow you to run or install Windows software on your Mac. The wrappers require an installation program like Wine(Skin), Cider, CiderX and so on. Wine is free, but you still need to have a copy of the game.

My question is: can I play the games that I bought for PC on Mac the 3rd way? Would this be legal?

My Problem with the first two is that they both would cost me a lot of additional money – it's like paying for one game about 5 times.

Best Answer

I take issue with your premise: NO BIG GAMES (with the exception of Portal 2 and Starcraft 2) have been released for Mac this far.)

Evidently, you're unfamiliar with Steam. I don't know what your definition of "big games" is, but in my mind Civilization V, Counter-Strike, Assassin's Creed 2, etc. qualify. Best part about Steam is that if you buy a game, you can download it for Windows and/or Macintosh.

Yes, if you want to play Windows PC games the best option is to use Boot Camp. And yes, you have to buy Windows to install in Boot Camp. Of course, if you were to purchase a Windows PC you would also have to buy Windows.

So, I'm not sure what you expect here… Apple should throw in a copy of Windows for free? Apple should spend money and resources to incorporate Wine or Cider into the OS and go through the tremendous support and legal headache while simultaneously cutting its developers off at the knees by allowing Windows applications to flood the ecosystem? — not that it would ever happen… ;)

Apple's last OS update, 10.6 was a $30 upgrade. 10.7 Lion will also be a $30 upgrade. Seems to me your beef should be with Microsoft's pricing of Windows. (Oh, and lazy/cheap game developers of course. heh.)

To answer the central question: Wine and Cider are both legal, since they use no code or binary data from Microsoft's implementation of Windows.

Related Question