Games

Games

Titles we have deliberately taken on, and what was measured on each. This is not an inventory of anyone's library — a game gets a row when there was a reason to work on it.

Tested on an M4 Max, macOS 27, GPTK 4.0b2, against CrossOver 26.3 and crossover-preview-arm64-20260821. The CrossOver column says which builds each title was measured on. No bottle carried winevideo except where a page below says otherwise.

Game	Engine	Symptom	Fix	Backend	DX	GPTK	CrossOver	Status
Mortal Shell 2	Unreal Engine 5.6.1	Crash on the first cutscene	Runtime patch, 4 sites	D3DMetal	12	3.0 and 4.0b2	26.3 and Preview	Fixed
Life is Strange: Reunion	Unreal Engine 5	Freezes after a while, anywhere	DXGI node guard	D3DMetal	12	4.0b2 only -- 3.0 crashes it	26.3 and Preview	Fixed
Life is Strange: Double Exposure	Unreal Engine 5	Freezes after a while, anywhere	DXGI node guard, same DLL	D3DMetal	12	4.0b2 only -- 3.0 crashes it	26.3 and Preview	Fixed
DYNASTY WARRIORS: ORIGINS	Koei Tecmo, in-house	Cutscene runs with sound, picture black	Video bridge, D3D11 to D3D12	D3DMetal	12	4.0b2	26.3 and Preview	Fixed
Beast of Reincarnation	Unreal Engine 5	Startup video plays with sound, no picture	NV12 restored, Electra forced to software	D3DMetal	12	3.0 and 4.0b2	26.3 and Preview	Fixed
Persona 5 Strikers	Koei Tecmo, in-house	Video never starts; sound only	Staged VC-1 codec, and a D3D9 to D3D11 bridge	DXMT	11	3.0 and 4.0b2	26.3 and Preview	Fixed
Nioh	Koei Tecmo, in-house	Cutscene refuses to play, then crashes	Staged WMV3 codec, and the same D3D9 to D3D11 bridge	DXMT	11	4.0b2	26.3 and Preview	Fixed
Nioh 2	Koei Tecmo, in-house	Cutscene refuses to play, then crashes	Same codec and same bridge as Nioh, unchanged	DXMT	11	4.0b2	26.3 and Preview	Fixed
Nioh 3	Koei Tecmo, in-house	Failed to play movie	The DYNASTY WARRIORS bridge, unchanged	D3DMetal	12	4.0b2	26.3 and Preview	Fixed
Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty	Koei Tecmo, in-house	Cutscene runs with sound, picture black	The DYNASTY WARRIORS bridge, unchanged	D3DMetal	12	4.0b2	26.3 and Preview	Fixed
NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139	Toylogic, in-house	Crashes when the first video starts	Software decode, and the frame written into the game's target	D3DMetal	11	4.0b2	26.3 and Preview	Fixed
KINGDOM HEARTS Dream Drop Distance	Square Enix, in-house	Cutscene runs with sound, picture solid green	Software decode, and the luma and chroma planes written into the game's own textures	D3DMetal	11 + 12	4.0b2	Preview -- not tried on 26.3	Fixed
KINGDOM HEARTS HD 1.5+2.5 ReMIX	Square Enix, in-house	Cutscene runs with sound, picture solid green	The Dream Drop Distance fix, unchanged -- six executables, same route	D3DMetal	11 + 12	4.0b2	Preview -- not tried on 26.3	Fixed
TMNT: Splintered Fate	Rebirth, in-house	Opens a window, then closes silently	A guard on the D3D12 call that ends the process instead of failing	D3DMetal	12	4.0b2	26.3 and Preview	Fixed
Tormented Souls 2	Unreal Engine 5	Fatal error before the first frame	16:9 modes added to a list that offered none	D3DMetal	12	4.0b2	26.3 and Preview	Fixed
Devil May Cry 5	RE Engine	Crashes when a skill preview video plays	Staged VC-1 codec. Nothing installed beside the game	D3DMetal	12	3.0 and 4.0b2	26.3 and Preview	Fixed
RESIDENT EVIL 2	RE Engine	Crashes when a video plays	The same staged VC-1 codec, unchanged	D3DMetal	12	3.0 and 4.0b2	26.3 and Preview	Fixed
RESIDENT EVIL 3	RE Engine	Crashes when a video plays	The same staged VC-1 codec, unchanged	D3DMetal	12	3.0 and 4.0b2	26.3 and Preview	Fixed
NINJA GAIDEN 4	Koei Tecmo, in-house	Says the VP9 codec is missing, then exits	Staged Matroska demuxer, and the MFT gate answered	D3DMetal	12	3.0 only -- 4.0b2 stalls it	26.3 only -- Preview stalls before video	Fixed

Update the toolkit, then pick a CrossOver. Every fix here was written against Apple's Game Porting Toolkit 4.0b2, which is what CrossOver Preview ships and what CrossOver 26.3 does not -- 26.3 carries D3DMetal 3.0, and on 3.0 these patches do not find what they were written to find. So 26.3 is a perfectly good engine for all of this once its toolkit is replaced, and a poor one until then. The app does the replacing, and keeps the original beside it.

The exception is NINJA GAIDEN 4, which is the other way round: it runs on 3.0 and stalls on 4.0b2, before its first frame and for reasons inside the toolkit that nothing here can reach.

The GPTK column is the one that decides, and it is newer than this table. Apple's Game Porting Toolkit is what actually draws these games, and CrossOver ships it inside the bundle rather than as something you pick: 26.3 carries D3DMetal 3.0, Preview 27.0 carries 4.0b2 and uses it unless CX_GRAPHICS_BACKEND_VERSION says otherwise. So "this only works on Preview" has, for at least two titles here, meant "this needs the newer toolkit" and nothing about Wine at all.

The two rows in bold are where that stops being a footnote. NINJA GAIDEN 4 runs on 3.0 and stalls on 4.0b2. Life is Strange runs on 4.0b2 and crashes on 3.0. Opposite requirements, same machine, so there is no single toolkit that serves the whole table and no version of CrossOver that is simply "better". Both were measured by moving the toolkit under a fixed CrossOver, which is the only way to separate the two.

Everything else in the column is derived rather than freshly run: a title measured on 26.3 was measured on 3.0, and one measured on Preview was measured on 4.0b2. A cell naming one generation means the other was never tried, not that it fails.

Backend and DX are not preferences, they are requirements. Persona 5 Strikers, Nioh and Nioh 2 only work on DXMT: all three need a shared D3D9 surface handle, and DXMT implements sharing where D3DMetal has none to build on. Nioh 3, despite the name, belongs with the other group -- it is D3D12 on D3DMetal and never touches D3D9, and NieR Replicant is D3D11 on D3DMetal. The rest run on D3DMetal with the D3D12 renderer, which is also what keeps PSO precompilation -- -dx11 dodges some of these faults and costs permanent shader-compilation stutter.

Which CrossOver, and what "Preview" means. Every measurement here was taken against CrossOver 26.3 and crossover-preview-arm64-20260821, and the CrossOver column says which of the two a title was measured on rather than which it might work on. Seventeen of the nineteen run on stable 26.3, which inverts where this project started: stable was the exception and is now the rule, and the toolkit -- not the engine -- turned out to be the axis that decides most of these titles.

The two exceptions point in opposite directions. The Kingdom Hearts pair has only ever been launched on Preview, so its rows record an absence rather than a result and nothing is claimed either way. NINJA GAIDEN 4 is the reverse: it runs on stock 26.3 and stalls on Preview, and what stalls it is the toolkit, which executes command lists concurrently with no lever to turn that off.

Two lessons paid for by rows that were wrong for a while, and are worth more than the statuses they corrected:

• A staged codec is built against one CrossOver and is not usable under another. Persona 5 Strikers was recorded as not working on 26.3 after a first attempt failed there; the codec simply had not been built for 26.3 yet.
• A fix that reports itself installed is not necessarily loaded. NieR Replicant was recorded as Preview-only because its 26.3 runs died at the first video. The bridge was never executing in those runs: the registry override it depends on had gone missing, and the installer answered installed from the files alone.

None of these games needs CrossOver patched, wherever the container can be opened. That was not true when this project started, and it is the single biggest thing that changed. The qualifier is the whole of what remains, and it is a container question rather than a codec one.

Both builds decode VP9 the same way, and for a long time what only Preview could do was open a WebM -- which was the whole of the difference. DYNASTY WARRIORS ships 355 .webm cutscenes and could not get as far as decoding on stable, while Mortal Shell 2 ships the same codec in .mp4, which both builds handle. The plugin-by-plugin comparison that conclusion rested on is in Findings, under The container, not the codec.

That gap is now closed, and it was a missing plugin rather than a missing engine. Preview ships libgstmatroska, for both architectures, and stable 26.3 ships it for neither -- so the difference between the two builds on a WebM was one plugin the whole time. Staging it beside the decoder gives stable one too, and NINJA GAIDEN 4 is where that was measured: it plays on stock 26.3, video and all, with nothing patched into CrossOver.

Several titles need a codec no CrossOver ships -- VC-1, WMV3, WMV2 or WMA -- and it is staged beside the game rather than patched into it. Which titles, and which plugin each one needs, is the Codec column of what each title actually loads; the count is derived there rather than repeated here, because the number written here was three for as long as it took two more titles to join the list. Nioh 3 needs none: its video is already NV12 by the time Media Foundation is asked for it.

None of these fixes decodes anything. The frames existed all along; they were being crashed on, mislabelled, or thrown away.

Every row is a title we deliberately took on, and every claim on the linked page comes from a measurement on an installed copy.

What each title actually loads

The table above says whether a title works. This one says what it is made of: which DLL the fix rides on, which bridge it was built from, which plugin has to be staged in front of CrossOver, and whether Wine has to be told to prefer our file at all.

Game	Backend	DX	GPTK	Carrier	Kept as	Bridge	Codec	Env levers	Registry
Mortal Shell 2	D3DMetal	12	3.0 and 4.0b2	libogg_64.dll	libogg_64_real.dll	ue5-media-fix.c	—	—	—
Life is Strange: Reunion	D3DMetal	12	4.0b2 only -- 3.0 crashes it	libogg_64.dll	libogg_64_real.dll	ue5-media-fix.c	—	—	—
Life is Strange: Double Exposure	D3DMetal	12	4.0b2 only -- 3.0 crashes it	libogg_64.dll	libogg_64_real.dll	ue5-media-fix.c	—	—	—
DYNASTY WARRIORS: ORIGINS	D3DMetal	12	4.0b2	libxess.dll	libxess_real.dll	dwo-video-bridge.c	libgstmatroska	—	—
Beast of Reincarnation	D3DMetal	12	3.0 and 4.0b2	libogg_64.dll	libogg_64_real.dll	ue5-media-fix.c	—	—	—
Persona 5 Strikers	DXMT	11	3.0 and 4.0b2	amd_ags_x64.dll	amd_ags_x64_real.dll	p5s-video-bridge.c	libgstlibav	BEAST_FORCE_NV12, BEAST_REFUSE_D3D_MANAGER	—
Nioh	DXMT	11	4.0b2	GfeSDK.dll	GfeSDK_real.dll	p5s-video-bridge.c	libgstlibav	BEAST_FORCE_NV12, BEAST_REFUSE_D3D_MANAGER	—
Nioh 2	DXMT	11	4.0b2	GfeSDK.dll	GfeSDK_real.dll	p5s-video-bridge.c	libgstlibav	BEAST_FORCE_NV12, BEAST_REFUSE_D3D_MANAGER	—
Nioh 3	D3DMetal	12	4.0b2	amd_ags_x64.dll	amd_ags_x64_real.dll	dwo-video-bridge.c	—	—	—
Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty	D3DMetal	12	4.0b2	libxess.dll	libxess_real.dll	dwo-video-bridge.c	—	—	—
NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139	D3DMetal	11	4.0b2	dinput8.dll	dinput8_real.dll	dwo-video-bridge.c	libgstlibav	—	yes
KINGDOM HEARTS Dream Drop Distance	D3DMetal	11 + 12	4.0b2	dinput8.dll	dinput8_real.dll	dwo-video-bridge.c	—	—	yes
KINGDOM HEARTS HD 1.5+2.5 ReMIX	D3DMetal	11 + 12	4.0b2	dinput8.dll	dinput8_real.dll	dwo-video-bridge.c	—	—	yes
TMNT: Splintered Fate	D3DMetal	12	4.0b2	fmod.dll	fmod_real.dll	d3d12-guards.c	—	—	—
Tormented Souls 2	D3DMetal	12	4.0b2	OpenColorIO_2_3.dll	OpenColorIO_2_3_real.dll	d3d12-guards.c	—	—	—
Devil May Cry 5	D3DMetal	12	3.0 and 4.0b2	—	—	—	libgstlibav	—	—
RESIDENT EVIL 2	D3DMetal	12	3.0 and 4.0b2	—	—	—	libgstlibav	—	—
RESIDENT EVIL 3	D3DMetal	12	3.0 and 4.0b2	—	—	—	libgstlibav	—	—
NINJA GAIDEN 4	D3DMetal	12	3.0 only -- 4.0b2 stalls it	dstorage.dll	dstorage_real.dll	ng4-observe.c	libgstmatroska	BEAST_FORCE_NV12, BEAST_REFUSE_D3D_MANAGER, NG4_ANSWER_MFT, NG4_CPU_DECOMP, NG4_FAKE_OPTIONS17, NG4_NO_D3D11_PATCH, NG4_PATCH_D3D12, NG4_REFUSE_DSTORAGE, NG4_SMALL_STAGING	—

Carrier is the DLL the fix rides on -- one the game already loads, chosen because it has nothing to do with video. Kept as is what the original is renamed to; where the carrier is a DLL Wine implements itself, that original is a copy taken from your own CrossOver and nothing is redistributed. Bridge is the source the shipped proxy was built from: 5 sources serve every title here, so a fault found in one is often already fixed in the others.

Registry says whether Wine has to be told to prefer our DLL. 2 fixes need it, and for the same reason: their carrier is dinput8, which Wine implements, so without the override the file beside the game is never opened. That key is the part that goes missing on its own -- a bottle reset, a bottle made after a CrossOver upgrade -- and a fix whose files are present is not therefore a fix that is running. Both installers check the registry now, and answer broken rather than installed when it is gone.

Env levers are the environment variables the shipped DLL reads. They are levers, not requirements: each one defaults to the setting the fix was measured with, and they exist so a failing title can be bisected without a rebuild.

Codec is the plugin stage-codecs.sh must put in front of CrossOver. 7 titles need a decoder no CrossOver ships, 2 need a demuxer, and telling those two cases apart is most of the work -- see How the codec staging works. The decoder column is the same on every build; the demuxer one is not, because Preview ships matroska and stable 26.3 does not, so those rows describe what stable needs and what Preview already has.

One bottle cannot hold all of these

CX_GRAPHICS_BACKEND divides them, and the Backend column above says which is which. The dxmt group because it needs a shared D3D9 surface handle and D3DMetal has none to give.

Steam libraries are shared between bottles, so giving that one a bottle of its own costs no disk and no re-download. Switching the backend by hand also works and means remembering to switch it — and a forgotten backend looks exactly like a fix that stopped working.

What each fix needs from CrossOver

The older form of this question was "does a fix need winevideo?", which framed it as a codec problem. It is not one, and asking it that way produced the wrong answer for the single title it existed to describe. What separates these titles is what each fix needs CrossOver to have already done before it can start: open a container, decode a codec, or neither. The Codec column above answers it per title. The distinction behind it is the part worth carrying:

• A demuxer is a container problem. DYNASTY WARRIORS: ORIGINS and NINJA GAIDEN 4 both play WebM, and Media Foundation cannot open one without a Matroska demuxer -- MFCreateSourceReaderFromByteStream fails at the open and nothing reaches a decoder at all. It reports that as MF_E_UNSUPPORTED_BYTESTREAM_TYPE, which reads like a missing codec and is not one. This one depends on the engine: Preview ships matroska for both architectures and stable 26.3 ships it for neither, so on stable the plugin has to be staged and on Preview it is already there. The VP9 inside is decoded identically by both builds.
• A decoder is a codec problem. No CrossOver decodes VC-1, WMV3, WMV2 or WMA, and seven titles play video in one of those -- the RE Engine three, the two Nioh, Persona 5 Strikers, and NieR Replicant, which joined the list by measurement after years of being filed as needing nothing. libgstlibav is staged beside the game rather than patched into the engine, so those fixes depend on nothing CrossOver decodes and behave the same on both builds.
• Neither, for the rest. Mortal Shell 2 decodes in-process with Electra's own libvpx; Beast of Reincarnation goes through an H.264 decoder both builds have; both Life is Strange freezes are inside DXGI and never touch video. One qualification on the last of those: the DLL those two install carries all three repairs, and its policy table arms only the node guard for them -- but the Media Foundation hooks it installs go in for every title regardless, and that unconditional instrumentation is the standing suspicion for why those two crash on 26.3. The fault has nothing to do with video; the DLL touches video anyway.

On winevideo. On a current Preview none of these fixes needs it, and the VP9 and WebM plugins it installs are redundant there. On a stable build it ships a WebM demuxer, which is the thing DYNASTY WARRIORS has no other way to get — stable 26.3 carries no matroska plugin, read out of the two installs. That is a conclusion from what each build contains, not a measurement: the title has never been launched on stable, with winevideo or without it, so no dependency on it has been measured here. One unbuilt alternative, and the reasoning behind it, is in Findings, under The container, not the codec.

The mechanism they share

Why each hook exists, which vtable slot each one takes, how a carrier DLL is picked and what was tried and did not work is in Findings. The division is deliberate: these pages carry the per-title findings and the wrong turns that came first, that one carries what is common to all of them.

Adding a row

Run the survey on that game's folder, and if it misbehaves, the probe. Both are in diagnostics/ and both are described in Diagnosing a new game.

Paste what they print, and say which CrossOver build printed it. Measurements are the point of these pages, and a row without one is worse than no row.