Whisky Developer Halts Work on Mac Gaming Tool, Endorses CrossOver - MacRumorsOpen MenuShow RoundupsShow Forums menuVisit ForumsOpen Sidebar
Skip to Content

Whisky Developer Halts Work on Mac Gaming Tool, Endorses CrossOver

by

Whisky, a popular open-source front-end for Wine that made Windows gaming on Mac more accessible, has ceased development. The project's 18-year-old creator, Isaac Marovitz, announced the shutdown and encouraged users to switch to the paid CrossOver app instead.

whisky icon
In offering the reasons for his decision, Marovitz expressed concern that Whisky was potentially harming the Wine ecosystem by competing with CrossOver, a commercial product from CodeWeavers that helps fund Wine development.

"Whisky, in my opinion, has not been a positive on the Wine community as a whole," he wrote on the project's website. He said that Whisky contributed "practically zero" to Wine development while potentially threatening CrossOver's financial viability.

Marovitz is also a full-time student currently attending Northeastern University, and so he has had to balance the increasing demands of the project with his academic responsibilities. "I lost interest in the project," he admitted. "And as I'm still a student and also not being paid for work on Whisky, it becomes hard to justify working on it if I no longer enjoy it." He said that occasional updates to Whisky may still come if macOS "fundamentally breaks the main app," which happened with macOS Sequoia 15.4.

Writing on the Codeweavers blog, CEO James B. Ramey said in response that he appreciated Marovitz's work. "We 'tip our cap' to Isaac and the impact he made to macOS gaming," Ramey wrote, acknowledging that Whisky, like CrossOver, was "a labor of love built by people who care deeply about giving users more choices."

During its run, Whisky gained popularity for its user-friendly interface that simplified running Windows games on macOS. The project highlighted the potential of Apple's own Game Porting Toolkit, which is based on the same Wine technology that powered both Whisky and CrossOver.

Despite stepping away from Whisky, Marovitz told Ars Technica he isn't done with Mac gaming: "Right now I'm working on the recompilation of Sonic Unleashed and bringing it fully to Mac."

Popular Stories

iOS 27 Next to iPhone

Here's When iOS 27 Rolls Out Today in Every Time Zone [Update: It's Out]

Sunday September 13, 2026 3:00 am PDT by
Update 10:04 a.m.: iOS 27 is rolling out now, though it may take a bit for all users to see it, so keep checking! Apple is about to release iOS 27, which will finally deliver more advanced Siri AI capabilities as well as a variety of other refinements, improvements, and new features to iPhones. It's Apple's biggest software update of the year, and Apple announced at Wednesday's iPhone event...
Read Full Article • 151 comments
iOS 27 Icon iPhone

iOS 27 Available Now With These 8 New Features

Monday September 14, 2026 9:00 am PDT by
Update — 10 a.m. Pacific Time: Apple has released iOS 27. During its iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Duo event last week, Apple announced that iOS 27 will be released widely on Monday, September 14. iOS 27 should be available around 10 a.m. Pacific Time / 1 p.m. Eastern Time today via the Settings app, under General → Software Update. Below, we have highlighted eight new features and...
Read Full Article • 111 comments
Apple iCloud Plus expansion hero

iCloud+ Now Includes Apple TV, Apple Arcade, and Curated Apple Music Stations in Over 100 Countries

Tuesday September 15, 2026 1:43 am PDT by
Apple today announced a new subscription initiative that turns paid iCloud+ subscriptions into a broader services bundle in more than 100 countries. In select countries, Apple says every paid iCloud+ plan, including the cheapest 50GB tier, now includes Apple TV and Apple Arcade "at no additional cost," while family sharing extends the storage, TV and Arcade access to up to five people....
Read Full Article • 103 comments

Top Rated Comments

kirbyrun Avatar
kirbyrun
18 months ago

Either this is poor reasoning or there is something fishy going on. The proper way is for CrossOver to differentiate with better features and design for people to pay for it. Now there is even less incentive to do so. Losing interest and being too busy with school are more realistic reasons, but then he could just hand the project off to someone else. The thing is, maybe someone else, whether connected to him or not, might just do something like it, and then the "harming Wine" situation will become the same again. Thus I do not accept the primary explanation -- not that he is lying, but that it doesn't make enough sense. It's pretty silly. The better scenario is that paid products should just be better.
The developer in question is a college student. I don't think it's "fishy" that a college student made a decision that doesn't measure up to a coldly analytical capitalist market-driven argument.
Score: 28 Votes (Like | Disagree)
W
Wx_Man
18 months ago
Occam’s Razor applies here.

Development takes time. Every human who has existed and will ever exist has a limited amount of time. That time must be managed for all tasks that need to be fulfilled and desired to be fulfilled.

His main time and focus should be on his studies. Now it could be that his studies are in Comp. Sci. so a hand waving argument could be made that his hobby project is beneficial to that from an operational standpoint. But that is still taking time away from the main purpose he’s at university.

Also he’s seems to have the right attitude when it comes to Open Source development. He admits straight up that he never really gave back to the Wine Community and that his free program took people away from possibly buying a Crossover license which funds the very company that supports Wine development the most. Like….it’s not even close. Which means Wine would be NO where near the state that it is in for Linux and MacOS users today if it weren’t for Codeweavers as a for profit company providing the bulk of Wine development. This shows an altruistic mindset which is actually the foundation of Open Source thinking and development.

And no….there is no need for conspiracy theories about Codeweavers perhaps soft pressuring the guy. There have been numerous free and open source front ends to Wine for years without pressure from Codeweavers. As a matter of fact I am using, as we speak, a lovely Wine front end called “Bottles” on my Linux computer. Built on GTK 3 for Linux, so it meshes nicely with the Gnome GUI as found in Fedora and Ubuntu, I’ve been using it for years. Before that it was “PlayOnLinux” which also offered a nicer interface than Crossover at the time but sadly now seems to be abandonware which is why I moved to Bottles which has a much better and more native looking interface with Ubuntu.
Score: 20 Votes (Like | Disagree)
SanderEvers Avatar
SanderEvers
18 months ago
So basically CodeWeavers asked him nicely to stop development.
Score: 18 Votes (Like | Disagree)
I
iPhoneFan5349
18 months ago

So basically CodeWeavers asked him nicely to stop development.
They can’t do that though. What they can do is pay him to stop
Score: 15 Votes (Like | Disagree)
xander49x Avatar
xander49x
18 months ago
This sounds fishy to me, I understand that he lost interest in whisky but to endorse crossover, I wonder how much money was involved or pressure was involved.
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
antiprotest Avatar
antiprotest
18 months ago
Either this is poor reasoning or there is something fishy going on. The proper way is for CrossOver to differentiate with better features and design for people to pay for it. Now there is even less incentive to do so. Losing interest and being too busy with school are more realistic reasons, but then he could just hand the project off to someone else. The thing is, maybe someone else, whether connected to him or not, might just do something like it, and then the "harming Wine" situation will become the same again. Thus I do not accept the primary explanation -- not that he is lying, but that it doesn't make enough sense. It's pretty silly. The better scenario is that paid products should just be better.
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Read All Comments