Mac gamers were happy when developer Riot Games announced plans back in May 2010 to offer a Mac version of its popular free-to-play action-RTS game League of Legends. Now those same Mac gamers will have to wait a long while to play the game again against its PC counterparts. In a post on the League of Legends message boards (free registration required), Riot Games announced that the Mac version will be shut down around midnight, Pacific Time, on Tuesday. The Mac client never got out of a beta test period.
In its statement Riot Games said, "We realize our current approach regarding the Mac platform won"t guarantee the quality and frequent updates we deliver today on the PC and are expected by our player community. We will continue to investigate the opportunity to provide player access on the Mac Platform in the future that aligns with our service and content update standards. We are committed to building a solution that will work on the Mac in the long run, but it will take some time."
Part of the reason that the Mac client may not have been up to par could have been the fact that it was being handled by a third party developer, TransGaming. In its statement Riot Games said, "At the heart of the issue is our rapid update cycle, where we make regular balance changes and content updates. We currently develop on the PC, but since the plan was for the Mac to share servers, we believed that a Mac version that was frequently unavailable was not up to Riot standards." Mac beta testers have been invited by Riot to continue playing on the PC version and they can also get access to a free Champions Pack download for their trouble. However, they also have the option to get a full refund on their micro-transactions and close their accounts.