Collectible card games have been around for over two decades, with the first collectible card game ever made being Magic: The Gathering, created by Wizards of the Coast in 1993. Since its conception, Magic has inspired countless other CCGs, with the “Big 3” being Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh! and The Pokémon Trading Card Game.
But as consoles and computers got better and stronger, the main thing holding CCGs back was their physicality. They were still successful, but a major untapped market was the online player base. Some people wanted to play the game but didn’t want the hassle of collecting the physical cards and going out to comic shops and tournaments. So slowly, each big CCG began releasing their own online versions. Other companies saw the success that card games had and tried their best to emulate them, with Blizzard releasing Hearthstone, a CCG set in the World of Warcraft universe, and more recently Riot Game’s Legends of Runeterra, taking place in the League of Legends universe.
Magic: The Gathering Arena released its beta in 2017, and was fully released on Windows in 2019, seeing major success. However, Apple users on macOS were left out, with the promise that MTG Arena would be available on macOS sometime in 2020. In a recent announcement on the Magic dev blog, however, a solid release date was set.
“We’re happy to announce that in partnership with the Epic Games Store, MTG Arena will soon be available on macOS,” Wizards of the Coast wrote.
Starting on June 25m, macOS users will be able to download Magic: The Gathering Arena through the Epic Games Store. The macOS release will be fully cross-compatible with the Windows client, with players on both platforms sharing and identical experience. If you previously played MTG Arena on Windows, you can log in with your existing Wizards account to access all of your already acquired items, although you’ll still need to register a separate Epic games account to download the macOS client.
Wizards of the Coast ended the announcement on a high note, stating, “We are very excited to finally announce the release date for macOS as we lay the groundwork to bring MTG Arena to even more platforms later this year.”
You can check out Magic: The Gathering Arena here.