I am having trouble launching game. I use a mac. The error appears: Graphics Initialization Failed. Can you help with this? It was working yesterday, but with the new patch this error appeared. I have already restarted the mac a couple of times and made sure my system is up to date.
I am having this same issue… help?
I suggest starting new topics. This might be due to the new patch adding metal support to HotS.
Make sure your Mac OS version is the latest supported by your OS.
I am getting same message i played fine yesterday and played fine since game was launched. i got the os they want but METAL. whatever that is, is causing the problem. This sucks
Please check your Mac meets the minimum requirements. They were raised. Older ones like from 2010 might still meet the OS requirement but could still fail the GPU requirement.
They raised requirements on the same game? That’s garbage. That’s a quick way to lose interest in the game.
No Blizzard did not raise the system requirements for HotS. Apple did.
Apple is dropping support for OpenGL and hence HotS must use Metal to work on modern MacOS. Until this update some people with modern mac systems were unable to play HotS because the game was effectively too old to work. To solve this Blizzard moved HotS to using Metal, as that is now the only graphics API Apple supports. However because Apple does not care about old systems they did not bother to implement good metal support for systems older than 2014, hence HotS will now only work on systems using 2014 AMD GPUs or 2012 NVidia GPUs.
If you really want to play HotS on an old Mac you could try installing Windows 10. The D3D10 complaint GPUs in them should still be compatible with the Windows version of HotS which uses D3D11.
So wait… you’re saying that since last week when my laptop worked with HOTS, it’s Apple’s fault that it won’t work with the new patch?
Yes, because they are forcing all developers to drop OpenGL support and instead use Metal to be compatible with modern Mac OS. Unless your Mac version supports running a sufficient feature level of Metal you are out of luck. Apple basically does not care about such people anymore sadly.
It would be like Microsoft saying that Windows 10 will drop support for all D3D versions below 12. This would force all game developers to drop support for Windows 7 and 8 and then raise the minimum requirements of all the games to GPUs which support D3D12. Fortunately Microsoft actually cares, which is why Windows 10 still technically supports ancient D3D versions, even if they are now a bit buggy.
Ok… so why will D3 run just fine but HOTS won’t? Seems like it’s a Blizzard patch problem than a Mac problem. Or is there something I’m missing?
All I can do is point out the official minimum requirements for Mac.
Video
NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 640 or AMD Radeon™ R9 M290X or better - Metal capable GPU
The GT 640 is a desktop GPU from 2012. The Radeon R9 M290X (Neptune XT) is a mobile GPU from 2014. Hence Desktop Macs with 2012 hardware should still run HotS but laptops need 2014 hardware or newer.
D3 and SC2 (HotS engine) use completely different shader designs. It is possible that the SC2 shader designs require some Metal API features to work efficiently that are only offered on sufficiently modern hardware while D3 did not.
You could try campaigning Blizzard if there is a way for them to lower the minimum requirements of HotS as far as Metal API compliance goes without tanking the graphic quality or performance for modern Mac OS users.
For reference, supported Mac players reported huge gains in frame rate during the beta of this patch. For example from the game barely running at low with decent frame rate to playing on Ultra hitting the refresh rate. How much of this low performance before was caused by lack of proper OpenGL support (compared with Windows) one may never know.
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That helps explain the 35% drop in stock price since this time last year. Thanks for the info dude/dudette. I appreciate it!
im having the same problem , I have a mac , ive been playing the last few weeks now it says Graphics Initialization FailedHeroes of the Storm requires a Metal-capable graphics device** ??? it does not work now.