Updated Requirements for New macOS Applications on Steam

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SiENcE
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Updated Requirements for New macOS Applications on Steam

Post by SiENcE »

As you may already know, Apple will be dropping support for 32-bit Mac applications in October 2019 with their release of macOS Catalina 10.15. In short, if your game is a 32-bit Mac application, customers who update their macOS to 10.15 will no longer be able to run the application.

Steam will continue to sell existing 32-bit Mac applications to users, however all new applications will need to be 64-bit and notarized by Apple. This new requirement will go into effect October 14th, 2019.
Blogpost:
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steam ... 3428097613

Notarizing Your App Before Distribution:
https://developer.apple.com/documentati ... stribution

My question:
Does every game creator have to do this himself or are the binaries notarized by the LÖVE team?

It can be a bit difficult for some people to have a working Mac with the latest XCode and a Developer Account :? .
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slime
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Re: Updated Requirements for New macOS Applications on Steam

Post by slime »

love has been purely 64 bit on macOS for many years now.
You must do the notarization yourself - otherwise every love game in existence would stop working on macOS for all time if one single love game contained malware (and I'm not sure it's even possible to run an app which had a .love put into its package after it's already been notarized and codesigned - Apple might consider that tampering with the app's data).
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ivan
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Re: Updated Requirements for New macOS Applications on Steam

Post by ivan »

Not sure how the Mac distribution works.
not sure it's even possible to run an app which had a .love put into its package after it's already been notarized and codesigned
We won't have to re-notarize after each modification to the .love file, right?
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Re: Updated Requirements for New macOS Applications on Steam

Post by slime »

Before distribution? Good question. I don't have any practical experience with notarization right now so I don't know for sure - on the one hand, notarization means uploading the whole app for Apple to check, which might mean it includes a hash based on the total contents of the .app. On the other hand, I believe it only looks at executables and binary libraries/frameworks in terms of what it actively scans.

That said, notarization is meant to be a final step before distribution, not something you'd do midway through development.
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SiENcE
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Re: Updated Requirements for New macOS Applications on Steam

Post by SiENcE »

slime wrote: Mon Sep 23, 2019 8:38 pm That said, notarization is meant to be a final step before distribution, not something you'd do midway through development.
That's also what I understood.

But the most problem is, to have a working updated XCode Studio and an Apple Developer Account to submit the Game to Apple for notarization.

This is :3

Note: On the Apple site is also a description how todo it for Preexisting Software ("Notarize Your Preexisting Software").

Note 2: Someone explained me, that software that is build without an Apple Developer ID is not included right now. But it's only a matter of time before you lock everything externally.
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Re: Updated Requirements for New macOS Applications on Steam

Post by ivan »

SiENcE wrote: Tue Sep 24, 2019 12:29 pm But the most problem is, to have a working updated XCode Studio
I don't mind giving Apple $100 per year, but yea it would be highly inconvenient for people like me who develop primarily under Windows.
Would be good if somebody figures out how to automate the notarization process so we don't have to deal with XCode Studio.
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