MacOS Catalina - Releasing on Steam

[Zetsubou]

Let me preface this question by saying that I know very little about MacOS.
Maybe I'm doing something wrong, maybe this is just how it works in OSX. Bear with me.

I've just gone through the process of notarizing one of my games (following the Patreon article) and uploading it to Steam.
I've uploaded the signed & stapled DMG file as-is. Steam distributes this file correctly, and I can get it to open on a client computer.

The problem is, DMG files don't seem to mesh with the way Steam works.
Trying to run the DMG file directly didn't seem to work at all, so I wrote a .sh file which runs "open MyGame.dmg".
That works. Hitting Play in Steam executes the .sh file, and the DMG is opened.
But that's it. The game doesn't launch. The player needs to extract the contents of the DMG, or run it out of the DMG.

Is this how it's supposed to work?
I uploaded the DMG as-is because I figured that was the whole point of the notarization process: build and upload a trusted file, which Apple has checked, and don't tamper with the end product.
But the end result here is that players need to either run the game from the DMG by manually clicking on it (which doesn't seem to work with Big Picture mode) or extract the DMG file anew every time a game is updated. In either case, the simplicity of clicking on the Play button and running the game is gone.

Is there a better command than "open" which I should be using for this?
Should I be extracting the DMG after all?

[PyTom]

My guess is you probably want to take the app out of the dmg, and uploading that to Steam. (Or just using the app that's the intermediate product.)

[Zetsubou]

Thanks PyTom, I'll upload the .app for now and see if Steam complains.

The .app passes "stapler validate".
If I do a "./notarize.sh MyGame status" it comes back as approved.
However, it fails "spctl -a -vvv -t install", which suggests that GateKeeper won't accept it.
eg. "spctl -a -vvv -t install MyGame.app" gives the error "a sealed resource is missing or invalid".
(The DMG passes all tests)

I guess it'll depend on Steam's validation process.
I'll try to test on Catalina (currently testing on Mojave) at some point and make sure it works.

[Obscura]

So looking through the discussions on this, I wonder if this may(?) have to do with enabling all the entitlements when signing the app? I was looking at this discussion (I think you need to be logged in as a Steam developer to see it):

https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steam ... 990736602/

Someone in the thread also said they solved the issue by selecting “Disable Library Verification” when hardening the runtime (not sure what that means, lol).

[Zetsubou]

Interesting. I'm not sure if I'm having the same problem though.
I put a game through review just yesterday and the Valve reviewer didn't have any problem with the MacOS build. I've also been able to play the build through Steam on MacOS without issue.

That being said, the above commands do fail on the version downloaded from Steam. (But not on the files I have on my local machine which I then uploaded)
The manifest on Steam lists all of the correct files and file sizes. Everything looks good. But once the game is actually downloaded, some of the file sizes differ from what the manifest says, which I suspect is causing the verification to fail.

I'm not sure if there's a problem here or not. No notarization issues were noted during review, and the game runs fine on MacOS Catalina when downloaded through Steam. For now I guess I'll assume it's all good and wait for a problem to pop up.

[jack_norton]

Or simply ignore MacOS completely. 90% of indie devs I know, including myself, are going to do it. Some of them earning six figures a year so would be definitely worthwhile to do a mac port, but they still can't be bothered to do all this mess just to have our grace Mac decide to allow us running the games lol

[Obscura]

After going through some of the notarization process yesterday, I totally understand why devs are going that route, Jack. You pay $99 a year to have the privilege of sitting through a convoluted process (IMHO), which you'll need to repeat for not only every Mac version of any game you have, but every update of that Mac version you release, as I understand it. Good grief. It's a lot of busy work for just one game, I can only imagine what this is like if you've got an entire catalog of games to notarize.

[jack_norton]

Yes it's simply not worth the time! And imagine during a beta of a RPG with 3-4 updates each day... lol insane

[Zetsubou]

If I could go back in time 2 weeks, I'd tell myself not to bother. This whole thing has already eaten too much time and money.
But now that I have a developer license, a Catalina VM, and scripts to automate the process, I figure I'll keep at it, if only because I don't want that effort to go to waste.