The various technical issues that have plagued the Mac version of Final Fantasy XIV have caused publisher Square Enix to pull the game from sale and offer refunds.

In a post over on the Square Enix forums, Producer and Director Naoki Yoshida apologised for the game's poor performance on Mac, citing "insufficient communication of system requirements," and a "premature release," with the game going on sale before all its bugs were fixed.

"While the development and operations teams, as well as our entire company, were involved in this mistake, it was I who ultimately made the decision to release the Mac version under these circumstances and therefore bear sole responsibility, and I sincerely apologise to you all," wrote Yoshida.

"Although our development and QA teams tested the client on Mac hardware, because of our last minute efforts to improve performance and the possibility that system requirements might change," continued Yoshida. "However, in the chaos leading up to the multi-platform launch of our expansion, we released incorrect requirements, which were not updated prior to the Mac version’s official release...Had we provided accurate information beforehand, I know many of you would not have purchased the Mac version."

As for exactly why the Mac version has suffered from development problems, Yoshida goes on to explain in the post that FFXIV uses middleware developed by TransGaming to convert DirectX API calls into OpenGL calls that work on Mac systems. This conversion, coupled with OpenGL's comparatively poor performance compared to DirectX, is what Yoshida says caused so many problems.

"As an MMORPG, FFXIV has to display many complex objects at once, and as such it is unavoidably demanding on systems," wrote Yoshida. "If FFXIV were to be developed in native OpenGL for Mac OS, it is expected that there would be a performance gap of approximately 30 percent compared the DirectX version...a low-spec Windows PC may run the game adequately, but a Mac system with equivalent hardware may suffer from greatly reduced frame rates, further exacerbating the performance gap."

As for why Square Enix chose to use a middleware solution, rather than have native OpenGL support on Mac hardware, Yoshida cited "development costs," saying that "very few games are sold for Mac systems, and the prevailing opinion is that the majority of Mac users aren’t interested in games."

While the Mac version of FFXIV has been especially buggy, it hasn't had the best track record on PC either. When it was first released back in 2010, the game took a hammering in reviews thanks to a large number of bugs, structural problems, quest restrictions, and bad interface design. FFXIV's also not the first high-profile game to be pulled of late, with Warner forced to withdraw the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight following a string of issues.

Square Enix did manage to the turn the PC version of FFXIV around, though. The publisher offered extended free trials while working on a fix that later became the Realm Reborn version of the game. Since then, FFXIV has gone on to be a huge success. As of July 2015, the game has reached five million subscribers.