Spent $60 on game I was SHOCKED to see was supported on Mac... spent 20 hours downloading game (and my internet is reeeeeally good)... had mild heart attack when it finally finished downloading. Tried to play. Pull up launcher, yell squee when it works. Suffer through 5 full minutes of load screen (which also should not be, as it's running of an SSD)... load screen "progress bar" is 3/4 of the way done, it's happening, I'm so happy aaanndd... crash. Game just... closes itself for no reason whatsoever. I fiddle with security settings, since that seems to be the consensus of what "the problem" is... try 6 more times... nothing. Can we please make sure the game works on everything before we actually have people pay for it? I mean... I want to support it, because I do love Baldur's Gate and have been dying for a single player, offline game lately. But this is such a waste, and I'm not rich. :(

I feel your pain. You've made it further than I have. Mine won't actually open from launch. Gets stuck in the 'verifying' endless non-updating chicanery.

I must agree though - Larian has some explaining to do to Mac users. It's illegal to market something that doesn't so what it says it does.

Remember that as this is a in development game, gog.com rules explicitly state that you are entitled to a refund. This is in my opinion the best course of action.

Hold up there, w221. There's 'in development' (early access) and 'inoperational'. This is Early Access, only without the access.

I don't expect the game to be full; I don't expect it to be polished; I don't expect it to not be buggy and I don't even expect it not to crash. But £50 lighter, I DO expect it to launch.

That happens during what amounts to being a Beta test. That's why GOG has a good refund policy for "In Development" titles.

It's possible some other software on your computer isn't playing nicely with various of BG3's inner bits-n-bobs. At this stage of things, Larian hasn't really been able to devote the (massive) resources needed to make sure none of that happens. Uncommon cases of "lol nope after all" are inevitable, be it for Macs or for PCs.

...

It's also possible maybe you don't meet the system requirements? Possibly you fall just baaaarely short of one of them? For a random example, maybe you need an OS update; it requires macOS 10.15.6, and recommends 10.15.7 ... but maybe you still have 10.15.5 ...? I don't know enough about Mac requirements to give truly constructive suggestions on that front, but, it's got to be worth it to TRIPLE-check every aspect of your computer against those minimum requirements.

I meant: "this is an in development game, so you can get a refund at any time", this was only a post about gog.com rules. I am of course not trying to defend the state of the game.

You’ve been cheated, I agree with you on that. But at least you can get your money back, that’s why I suggest you do it.

I seen on steam a lot of people fixed the game by reinstalling DX 2017 I think it is. Check in the files. or check the steam forums. It could be it.

I've double and triple checked, the computer is fine to run it. Now I know it's early access. I expected bugs, wasn't thinking it's a finished product, especially since even the developers are saying it's probably around a year out. I *did* expect it to at least run. It should have been left as a closed Beta through invite only if the Mac version was quite so un-finished that it can't even launch, that's my problem here.

I'm with the same problem..

iMac late 2013 i5, Catalina 10.15.7.

It stands for the N from "character screeN"... /sarcasm
I was being ironic, shortcuts don't make much sense in this game. On a funnier note... it seems to be a trend. L is for "journaL".

I've contacted Larian Support, describing the launch crash ("Baldur's Gate 3 quit unexpectedly") on my Mac Pro 6,1 (Late 2013 trashcan).
And couple days later new update came out, which provided a better, though still disappointing, error message:
> Your Mac does not support AVX2 instruction set and can not run the game. Please check official game requirements for more information.

Knowing more about the problem, I've managed to start the game using Intel SDE emulator (to emulate AVX2).
It took some time to launch, but started.
Switching graphics mode from Very Low, to Medium, and even High did not have any effect on the load times, or in-game slowness.
I was able to create a character, and play though first scene (inside chambers). As soon as I've taken my character outside, the occasional blips and glitches turned into constant freeze, making it unplayable. I've gotten as far as having to jump.. at which point it became apparent no performance improvement should be expected.

I've pinged Larian Support about my experience, hoping they will consider providing a version without AVX2 requirement.
I'm sure AVX2 CPU optimizations are worth it, but I suspect the game will run with AVX1 well enough.

Hoping Larian would consider compiling a version which does not require AVX2 CPU support.
After all, the more gamers can run BG3, the better. It's not like Larian gets a kickback from Intel and AMD.
So hopefully, they will consider it.

== UPDATE (Oct. 13 2020) ==
Larian Support promised to ask engineers about possibility of not requiring AVX2. Will post an update when I hear back.

== UPDATE (Oct. 19 2020) ==
Someone mentioned on Larian forum.. on the same device where BG3 refuses to run due to CPU lacking AVX2 instruction set, it works just fine in Windows (via Bootcamp).
And indeed, I've setup Bootcamp Windows 10 on my Mac Pro; installed BG3, and was able to not only start it without problems, but also fully enjoy the game with graphics settings on High (DX11). Vulkan graphics driver did not work for me.
Mentioned this to Larian Support as well.
So yeah.. AVX2 is not a real requirement. Hopefully, Larian will release a macOS version without AVX2.

It's considerably harder to upgrade Macs, compared to non-Apple computers.
Folks owning macOS devices should not be so severely restricted, and penalized..
If we're lucky, external GPU might be an option.. It's not like we can easily upgrade CPU, or even a internal GPU.