Yes. Seriously. You can indeed play Windows Games from Epic Games Store on macOS! If you have been wanting to play games like Rocket League on macOS or perhaps have a whole library of free but mostly Windows-only games you’ve accumulated on the Epic Games Store that you wish you could run on your Mac? Here’s how you can do it!

I’ve also updated this post on how to run EGS games with CrossOver preview. Read on!

Running Windows Games from Epic Games Store on macOS

This updated guide assumes you are using an Apple Silicon Mac and is on MacOS Sonoma. I’ve recently upgraded my Mac to a Mac Studio powered by M2 Max.

1. CrossOver translates Windows app (and games) instructions into macOS instructions in real-time

What’s the secret sauce? CodeWeavers CrossOver, specifically their latest version 23.5 release which supports DirectX 11 and DirectX 12, thanks to Apple releasing D3DMetal Game Porting Toolkit. CrossOver is a pretty amazing piece of software and the team that developed Wine, which is the underlying open source software that CrossOver is based on, is nothing short of geniuses in my opinion. CrossOver basically translates Windows code or instructions into macOS instructions and thus, allowing Windows applications to basically run on your Mac. Since it’s not an emulator, the performance you get off CrossOver is pretty good. You can see how I’ve gotten Witcher 3 to run on my MacBook here.

1. Heroic, a 3rd party open source Epic Games launcher, that supports running games over Wine (and CrossOver) on macOS

The second part of the equation here is the Heroic launcher. One thing that I hate about most game launchers today is that you need to use the launcher to install and run games that you purchase. The only exception is GOG.com, which is why I prefer to get my games from GOG. So with Epic Games, you will also need to have its launcher to work well with CrossOver. However, it does not. So in the past, I could only really play some of the games like Rocket League on my Mac using Parallels to run a Windows VM.

With Heroic, I can now install and launch these games and have it executed by CrossOver, effectively allowing me to run Windows Games from Epic Games Store on macOS.

Preparing CrossOver 24 (or later) for Heroic launcher

First of all, you of course need to have a copy of CrossOver 24. There’s no two ways around it. You can purchase it here from their site. Once you have it downloaded and installed, you will need to create a new Windows 7 64-bit Bottle. You need to name the bottle “Heroic” as it will be the bottle that the Heroic launcher will look for.

Next, you will need to enable D3DMetal. I would also usually enable MSync for the bottle which is now an option in CrossOver 24, but it you find it causing you trouble with some games, change it to ESync and see if it is better.

Next, install into the bottle the Visual C++ 2015-2022 (64-bit) redistributable package as it is a pre-requisite for some games, especially those that are built on Unreal Engine 4. You can easily add it by searching and installing it using Crossover into the same bottle. See the screenshots below.

Search for “C++ 2015” and install the latest Visual C++ 2015-2022 (64-bit).

If it asked which bottle, make sure to select the Heroic bottle again.

Once done, you should see both 32 and 64 bit versions installed.

Installing and using Heroic Launcher

You can find the latest releases of Heroic here. Once you have it downloaded, install it as how you would usually do with any other Mac apps.

As Heroic is provided as an unsigned app, you will need to run the following command on Terminal. This will disable Apple’s quarantine for the Heroic app.

xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Heroic.app

The latest version of Heroic launcher can run games from Epic Games Store, Amazon Prime Gaming and GOG. The first thing to do of course is to login on Epic Games Store. The process of logging in is the same as you would on the Epic Games Store. Once logged in, you will see all the list of games that you have on your Epic Games Store library.

Next thing is to check and make sure Heroic can find and detect CrossOver on your Mac. Also, make sure the bottle is also set to Heroic.

Installing and playing games on Heroic is pretty straightforward since it works just like any other game launcher. The only difference is of course that launching a Windows games on macOS automatically launches it through CrossOver.

If the game fails to find the default Wine version, just manually set it to CrossOver – 23.5 and “Heroic” as the CrossOver Bottle.

On my Mac Studio with an M2 Max, I can now get up to about 150-200 FPS for Rocket League at 1440p with all settings at high quality. D3DMetal support rocks!

Using Heroic Launcher with CrossOver Preview

Now that CrossOver are allowing us masses to get access to Preview releases, we can get to use CrossOver that supports the latest version of Wine and D3DMetal libraries from the latest GPTK versions. These preview versions are essentially public beta versions of CrossOver. To use Heroic launcher with CrossOver Preview, first sign up if you are already a licensed user of CrossOver at the Preview section. Then download the latest version and install it on your Mac. It can run side-by-side the stable version of CrossOver.

CrossOver Preview will load the same bottles and if you want to enable it with Preview, just enable the CrossOver Preview option on the bottle. Do this with the Heroic bottle.

The on Heroic Launcher, you can select the CrossOver version under the game’s settings. The Preview versions uses the release date as it’s version number. Here’s an example of Soulstice settings set to run using CrossOver – 20241028. With that, you will be able to run the games using the latest GPTK libraries. Version 20241028 includes GPTK 2.0b3.

Here are some games running on CrossOver and launched from Heroic Launcher

Rocket League on M2 Max with CrossOver 23.5 + D3DMetal

Check out the other games I’ve tried launching from the Epic Games Store using Heroic launcher.

DAEMON X MACHINA on M2 Max with CrossOver 23.5 + D3DMetal CONTROL on M2 Max with CrossOver 23.5 + D3DMetal Sable on M2 Max with CrossOver 23.5 + D3DMetal Soulstice on M2 Max with CrossOver Preview 20241028 + D3DMetal Dishonored on M2 Max using CrossOver

Windows Games from Epic Games Store on macOS an Intel-based Mac with an eGPU

You can still run Windows Games from Epic Games Store on macOS using Heroic + CrossOver. However, you will be limited to Direct X 11 games since DXVK only supports DX 11. From my old version of this post, I’ve listed the following games I’ve tried so far with Heroic and CrossOver, namely Rocket League, Darkest Dungeons and Galatic Civilisations III. All of them played really well. I do have to say that my MacBook is also powered with an eGPU enclosure with an AMD RX 580 GPU. With this setup, I can easily get 70+ fps on average running Rocket League at 1440p at the highest graphics settings.

Here’s a screenshot of Darkest Dungeons running on my Mac.

And finally, here’s Galactic Civilizations III. It’s hard to see on the screenshot but I get an average of 50+ fps at 1440p with the AMD RX 580 eGPU.

Let me know if this works as well for you too and feel free to share with me the list of games that works well using Heroic and CrossOver.

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