Discover the story of MacGameStore

Late 1990sBegan by Selling Boxed Games

The company begins by selling Mac games on the original Inside Mac Games website. The "store" was just one page of games and a single form for checkout. The web was so much simpler back in the 90s! Do you remember Myth II, Age of Empires II, and Tomb Raider II? We do too!

May 5 2005MacGameStore Official Launch

InsideMacGame's single-page store grew too big. So after a year of building a whole new e-commerce solution from scratch, we officially launched the MacGameStore to the public. Our first game sold under the new system was Sim City 4 (a boxed game!).

Dec 11 2005Began Digital Downloads

Sensing a shift in the gaming marketplace, we created the first Digital Download offers. Our friends at Pangea Software jumped in with their classic game Enigmo, which became the very first Digital Sale made on the MacGameStore.

Dec 12 2008Launched Mac•Games•Arcade

This was created by the team behind MacGameStore and served as a precursor to our current MacGameStore app. A first of its kind, Mac•Games•Arcade offered a centralized way for users to browse, purchase, and download Mac games. It was somewhat of a Mac equivalent to Steam at the time (although Steam didn't release their Mac Client until 2010), providing a streamlined experience for digital game management.

Dec 200970th Publisher Joined

Cateia Games joined MacGameStore, providing a casual flavor of Mac games. After all these years, they are still developing new games!

Jan 2010First in Class

By this time, MacGameStore had risen to become the #1 destination for digital Mac game purchases.

May 2010Re-Design Time

With every new website comes many iterations. The MacGameStore has gone through the good and the bad (we hope mostly good!). However one can never be happy and we constantly strive to improve the experience with every change.

2010 - Online Games?

You may have caught the image above showing a category for "Online Games". Yes, at one point we offered free online web-based games to play. They quickly grew out of fashion, and shifting web technologies left them in the dust with the demise of plugins like Shockwave and Macromedia.

Oct 2010One Hundredth Publisher Joined

Alawar teamed up with the MacGameStore, selling a variety of fun games on Mac. They are still going strong with all new game releases, mobile games, Windows, and more!

Dec 25 2010One Millionth Order Placed

realMyst: Masterpiece Edition by Cyan Worlds Inc.

June 2012Reached 250 Publishers

THQ Nordic joins the growing list of clients selling their Mac game versions through the MacGameStore.

July 14 2012Last Shipped Game Ordered

World of Warcraft Battle Chest was the last boxed game we sold and shipped out through physical means. From there it has been Digital Downloads all the way.

Sep 26 2012Launched the MacGameStore.app

After seeing the success (and pitfalls) to the original Mac•Games•Arcade application, the team at MacGameStore rewrote the project from the ground up. The game management features were overhauled from scratch, and a completely new store browsing experience was added. The new app also featured a "Game Compatibility Checker", and allowed users with limited storage to leave their purchases in the Cloud. 13 years and literally hundreds of updates later, the MacGameStore app is still going strong!

Dec 20 2012 - 10,000,000th Game Downloaded!

Just a few.

July 8 2013MacGameStore Rewards

Rewards Activated! All of our customers instantly got access to a brand new Rewards Program. For every 100 points you get, we give you $5 in Rewards to spend on a future purchase. No if's, and's, or but's. Our Rewards Program is still going strong to this very day!

Feb 2014Tried out Agile Development

Many large software companies use Agile Development methodologies. But here at MGS we're a small, close-knit team. We could take the time to manage a Scrum board, work on Stories, and come up with Points. Or we can go "Hey, one of our long-time Customers is having a problem and could use a fix. Can we all do a quick pivot to help them out?" We chose to go with the latter strategy.

May 2014Re-Design v4.0

One of the many looks we went through was removing all the skeuomorphic elements to better match macOS Yosemite. Many of the 3D elements were removed in favor of a more "flattened" appearance. And yes, we think skeuomorphic is a made-up word as well.

Nov 2014Sister Store Opens

We'd been selling Windows titles on the side for several years. But we wanted to give Windows gamers their own space. So we branched off and opened WinGameStore to consolidate all of our Windows and Linux titles. Both stores share the same DNA. In fact, if you open an account on MacGameStore, you can use it over on WinGameStore (and vice-versa). How's that for flexibility?

Oct 2018Peanut Joined the Team

Bringing on a new staff member can be hard, but we found a great fit for our office head of therapy position. She joined us with hefty demands of constant attention needs.

Jul 2019New Design as Current

Always striving for improvement, we revamped the design even further to be more clean and straight forward. Our goal has always been to focus on the relevant, rather than fill every blank space with unnecessary flashy detail.

Jun 2020Keep Going

Everyone was staying home (and so were we!). But we did our best to keep the lights on and the Servers running smoothly so everyone could keep playing Mac games.

Mar 2021Reached a Thousand Publishers

Brave Giant hits a milestone as our thousandth studio to join up!

Feb 1 2022Apple Silicon

The MacGameStore app undergoes a major upgrade by adding full support for Apple Silicon Macs. Apple has never stopped improving their technologies (and neither have we!).

Jun 2 2025MacGameStore App v5.5 Released

This is our most advanced version of the app yet, with several big new features added, and literally dozens upon dozens of "under-the-hood" improvements and fixes. Just like every app release since February 2022, our current app has full support for both Apple Silicon and Intel-based Macs. We've always tried our very best to support older Mac hardware and operating systems, and we'll continue to do so in the future.

2005 - 2025Happily Selling Mac Games

While we have been around and selling mac games, we have also been doing many improvements and tweaks to the store front, and application. Ever evolving for the needs and changes in the gaming world. With well over eleventymillion mac users having used and enjoyed MacGameStore, we will continue to provide games for many years to come.