Magic: the Gathering Arena is coming to MacOS this Thursday, June 25, alongside the in-game release of Core Set 2021. The Mac version of MTG Arena will only be available through the Epic Games Store.
Launching the Mac version of MTG Arena on the Epic Games Store “was the fastest way we could get a native, full-featured macOS client to our players,” Wizards of the Coast said. “We have an existing partnership with the Epic Games Store and are working with them to support our macOS release to ensure that players will have the same experience on macOS as they do on Windows sooner rather than later.”
However, they have no plans “at this time” to support a standalone Mac version of the game outside of the Epic Games Store.
The MacOS release of MTG Arena will officially make the came cross-platform, meaning that players will be able to access their existing accounts, full collections, and friends lists no matter which operating system they play the game on.
According to Wizards, one of the biggest hurdles that delayed Mac release was the transition to a 64-bit game client. Apple’s latest operating system, MacOS Catalina, released last year and ended support for legacy 32-bit applications. Wizards transitioned its Windows client to a 64-bit architecture earlier this month and, since they want to support the newest version of MacOS (which only allows 64-bit applications), they needed to complete that transition before releasing MTG Arena’s Mac version.
MacOS support will make MTG Arena much more accessible to players around the world as Wizards moves its Magic esports initiatives online. The last few weeks have featured four Players Tour Online events, played entirely on MTG Arena, as well as the very first Arena Open. They are also planning on holding the newly-combined Players Tour Finals in July and Mythic Invitational in August on MTG Arena, as well as a Grand Finals event later this year.
Magic’s First Time on MacOS
Since the release of Magic: the Gathering Online (neé Magic Online with Digital Objects) on PC in June 2002, one of the biggest community complaints about Magic’s digital form was that it was only available on PC—not on Mac. That trend continued when MTG Arena was announced in 2017 as PC-only to start.
But a few months later, in an interview with Hipsters of the Coast, Wizards CEO Chris Cocks said that they were intended to bring MTG Arena to Mac eventually. “We will support other platforms like Mac,” Cocks said. “[T]hat likely won’t be until either the later stages of the Beta or around when we declare it as a launch game, but Mac will be a platform that supported as well as all the other platforms you would expect us to do.”
It took a bit longer than expected—less than a year after launch—but Magic will be making its debut on Mac this week and mobile in 2020.