Feral Interactive

What Feral Interactive does

Feral Interactive is a British studio that turns finished desktop games into versions other machines can run. Its own description of the job is simple: bring the best desktop games to new platforms without compromise. The company both develops those conversions and publishes them, so it handles the engineering and the storefront side of a release. Its catalogue spans macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, Nintendo Switch, virtual reality and Windows.

The list of partners on the studio's about page is a good guide to the kind of work it takes on: 2K, Codemasters, Creative Assembly, Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Interactive, Firaxis Games, IO-Interactive, Kalypso Media, Relic Entertainment and SEGA. These are large publishers with back catalogues worth moving to platforms their originals never reached. Feral sits between those owners and the hardware makers, and its output is judged on how close the port stays to the original.

A Mac-first origin

Feral began in 1996 with the aim of bringing great games to the Mac, and for its first years the Mac was the whole point. The studio established itself as a publisher of games for Apple's computers at a time when many big releases simply skipped them. Its own account says it later widened that brief to iOS, Android, Nintendo Switch, virtual reality and Windows, and to Linux as well.

The press background the studio uses places it as a developer and publisher founded in 1996 and based in London, England. That location and date are the firmest biographical details it publishes; the rest of its story is read through the games it has shipped. Moving from one platform to many is the change that turned a Mac porting house into a cross-platform publisher with several storefronts of its own.

Total War: WARHAMMER III on macOS and Linux

One of the studio's best-known recent conversions is Total War: WARHAMMER III, the closing chapter of the WARHAMMER trilogy from Creative Assembly and SEGA. Feral brought the strategy title to macOS and then to Linux, announcing the Linux release on 16 June 2022 at the same price as the desktop original. Owners could buy it through Steam or the studio's own Feral Store.

The work did not stop at launch. Feral has continued to fold Creative Assembly's Windows updates into the Mac and Linux builds, most recently the 8.0 update and the Bhashiva Character Pack for Total War: WARHAMMER III. That habit of keeping a port in step with its source is a large part of what a conversion studio actually sells, because a version left behind stops feeling like the same game.

How Feral works with developers

Feral describes close relationships with the developers and publishers whose games it adapts, and the Total War line shows how that looks in practice. The studio also built the Windows version of Total War: ROME REMASTERED together with Creative Assembly, then published that remaster on macOS and Linux. So its role can shift from converting another team's finished game to sharing development of one.

Other partnerships follow the same shape across genres. The studio's back catalogue includes Alien: Isolation, the GRID Autosport racing games, XCOM 2, Company of Heroes 2, and various Tomb Raider and Life is Strange releases. What ties them together is not a genre but a problem: each was designed for one set of machines and had to be made to feel native on another, usually with a smaller team than the original build used.

The engineering behind a port

Porting is often spoken of as if it were copying, and the studio's own materials suggest the opposite. System requirements for Total War: WARHAMMER III on Linux name a minimum Ubuntu version, specific graphics drivers and a Vulkan requirement, and state that Intel graphics are not supported. Those details come from practical tuning rather than a simple rebuild of the Windows game.

The studio also maintains support for the platforms it ships on and points macOS and Linux players to its own support team when something breaks. That long tail is easy to overlook when a port is judged by a launch trailer, but it is where much of the labour sits. Feral keeps Mac and Linux owners in the same update cycle as Windows, which is the promise its reputation rests on.

Quick facts

Founded: 1996, according to Feral Interactive's own account. Based in: London, England, per the studio's press background. What it does: develops and publishes conversions of desktop games for macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, Nintendo Switch, virtual reality and Windows. Notable work: Total War: WARHAMMER I, II and III for macOS and Linux, the Windows version of Total War: ROME REMASTERED, Alien: Isolation, GRID Autosport, XCOM 2 and Company of Heroes 2.

Recent activity: the studio shipped the Linux release of Total War: WARHAMMER III on 16 June 2022 and has kept it aligned with Creative Assembly's Windows updates since, including the 8.0 update. Ownership: the about page reviewed for this article names no parent company, and Feral presents its partners as external publishers rather than owners. Its catalogue keeps reaching games their original releases never covered.

Games

• Batman: Arkham City
• BioShock 2 Remastered
• BioShock Remastered
• Borderlands
• Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
• Empire: Total War
• F1 2012
• F1 2013
• F1 2017
• Hitman: Absolution
• Hitman: Blood Money
• Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham
• Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga
• Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
• Napoleon: Total War
• Rome: Total War
• Rome: Total War: Alexander
• Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition
• Total War: Rome Remastered
• Total War: Three Kingdoms - Mandate of Heaven
• Total War: Warhammer II - The Silence & The Fury
• Total War: WARHAMMER III
• Total War: Warhammer III - Immortal Empires
• Tropico
• Tropico 4: Modern Times
• XCOM 2
• XCOM: Enemy Unknown

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