ESO Will Have Limited Mac Support in the Future

In an open letter to players Matt Firor, ZOS’s Studio Director and Director of Elder Scrolls Online, went over the consequences of Apple’s decision to switch to their own custom built ARM based processors.

For those of you who may not know, PCs and MACs currently used an x86 based CPU architecture. Apple’s new CPUs will be using the ARM architecture similar to a mobile device or tablet. This means that the software will not be compatible, forcing developers to make a decision on if they want to port their software or not.

In this case Matt states that the burden of porting ESO to the new Mac processor architecture forces them to make the decision to not support those devices.

It is a huge undertaking to port a product as old, large, and complex as ESO to a new CPU, with no certain outcome of success. Because of these factors, we will not be porting ESO to run on the new ARM-based Macs. ESO will continue to run on Intel-based Macs, and we will support it as long as there is a large enough Mac user base to warrant it. While it will be technically possible to run ESO via x86 emulation on the new Macs, expect a subpar gaming experience that we will not officially support.