Windows Pretendulation Still Sucks

The Final Fantasy XIV MMO now uses Transgaming’s Windows pretendulation software to get the game on Mac OS X and so it isn’t surprising that it is having trouble running well. Mike Fahey has this article about the terrible Mac version of Final Fantasy XIV.

Over a decade ago there was an article on this site encouraging people to boycott Transgaming’s bullshit ports of games. Back then Transgaming got their start by taking open-source windows emulator code, relicensing it when the license was in flux, and promising access to the source code with their changes included only if they were to get some number of subscribers to their subscription service for Linux gamers to pretendulate Windows games. They soon deleted that promise from their website and turned their back on the open-source community.

Their tech didn’t work well then, and it’s no surprise that it still doesn’t work well.

Transgaming seems to be mostly out of the business of ruining Linux games and has moved on to their TV gaming service, but now  Virtual Programming is continuing the Transgaming legacy of non-native games that work poorly