Finding a successor for the abandoned Whisky: Highball got 2,172 stars in 75 days, powered by a database

An engineer with just this one public repo built a free app for running Windows games on M-series Macs and earned 2,172 stars in 75 days. There were plenty of rivals before him, some backed by companies. What he claimed was the spot the open-source scene had left empty for 16 months, plus a one-liner anyone could repeat: "a Mac version of ProtonDB." Below: how he got going, where the stars came from, and which steps to copy if you want a project that earns stars the same way.

A Reddit post, and a spot that had been empty for 16 months

In Aug 2026 24, Gauthier Piarrette posted on r/macgaming: "Highball — A free, open-source way to run Windows games on Apple Silicon (with an open compatibility DB)." The post had a line: "The database is the actual product." His GitHub account was registered 2017 years earlier, has 52 followers, lists Amazon as his employer, and has only this one public repo (GitHub, 11-06).

First, the empty spot. The popular open-source Mac tool was Whisky, with 15k stars. It was archived in April 2025, stuck on Wine 7.7. A r/macgaming guide said that from May 2026 it started showing banners pushing people to buy the paid CrossOver. For the next 16 months, the open-source scene produced no real successor. Highball's GitHub topic tag was literally whisky-alternative, and its README had a dedicated section opening with: "This space has a cautionary tale: Whisky was archived in 2025." Three points followed: don't lock to one Wine version, make every patch public, and open-source the data separately. Each one described how it was avoiding the same fate.

A Show HN went up two days later, got 5 points and 0 comments, and didn't do much. Reddit did the work: by Sep 28, on day 35 after the repo was created, it had about 1,100 stars (from an archived page). Reddit hides post scores, but during that period this one post plausibly accounts for the 1,100 stars (inferred).

What it actually is

A native macOS app, plus a command-line version, under GPL-3. It installs Wine and the graphics translation layers DXMT, D3DMetal, and DXVK for you, installs Steam in one click, and connects to Epic and GOG libraries. The installer is notarized by Apple and can also be installed with brew install --cask highball.

The real selling point is this line in the README: Before you download 80 GB, it tells you whether the game will run and which renderer to use. This compatibility data lives in a separate CC0 repo, highball-db, that anyone can use. The site lists 21 verified games and 12,491 predicted ones, with predictions derived from ProtonDB plus anti-cheat data (gethighball.com, 11-06). Games using kernel-level anti-cheat are marked "impossible" outright. The README also gives benchmarks: Cyberpunk 2077 runs at 60–82 fps on an M5, and Red Dead Redemption 2 is playable on an M1 Pro thanks to a MoltenVK fix that has already been submitted upstream as a PR.

It has a rare trait: it doesn't trash competitors. The README says, "If you want commercial-grade support, buy CrossOver." The official comparison page even concedes that rival Pixel Port has more verified games.

How the stars came in waves

The Chinese channel deserves its own note. After GitHubDaily, five or six accounts including 0xGky, wangxiaoxin88, bkdgiffug, and Huahuazo rewrote nearly the same copy from October into November: "Dreading the hassle… Whisky abandoned, looking for a replacement… the compatibility database is the real treasure." This is a typical Chinese reposting-account network. No evidence shows the author organized it; it looks more like organic piggybacking. But the initiating move was the author's: the Chinese README went up three days before the GitHubDaily post.

Search is another channel. The official site's sitemap has 759 "[game name] on Mac" pages, plus comparison pages against Whisky, CrossOver, Pixel Port, GameHub, Parallels, and Porting Kit. Searching "Whisky alternative" or "<game name> on Mac" surfaces it. The compatibility data is ready-made material, and those hundreds of pages were generated directly from the database.

Current pace: 11-06 is at 2,172 stars and 91 forks, +163 over the last 7 days, +215 over the first 7 days, and 15–30 new per day, slowly cooling (GitHub daily counts). The project hasn't stalled: 75 commits in 959 days, 100+ releases, 20+ contributors. Installer downloads across releases total about 80k, including duplicate counts from auto-updates, so only the order of magnitude is meaningful.

Who it's competing with

The category isn't empty, and it isn't new.

• Pixel Port: launched in June 2026, closed-source, free beta, almost identical positioning (one-click Steam, flags what runs and what doesn't), but requires an Apple or Google login and only supports Steam. It ranks best in search, which Highball admits.
• GameSir GameHub for Mac: made by a controller company, public beta in April 2026, one TikTok video with 190k views. First-run experience is smoother than Highball's, and its reach among ordinary players is an order of magnitude higher.
• CrossOver: the commercial benchmark, paid.
• Sikarugir (formerly Kegworks): 4,000 stars, for power users who package manually.
• Bridgeplay: repo created in Oct 20, already 875 stars, puts Windows games into a native Mac Steam. Another project, Proton-ish, uses Highball directly as its runtime.

So what it won isn't the whole "Windows games on Mac" market. It's the slice on GitHub. The developers and tinkerers who starred it were drawn to the public good of "an open-source successor to Whisky + open data," not necessarily to how well it works. Open source, free, no account, data under CC0: those are exactly the things closed rivals can't offer, and that's what the stars are for.

Can you copy it?

Chasing it directly in Mac gaming isn't worth much. The spot is taken, it ships releases daily, and Bridgeplay is right behind. The technical bar is real too: Wine, Metal translation layers, patches to MoltenVK. 75 commits in 959 days isn't something a weekend project can match.

What you can carry over is the playbook, in four steps:

1. Find a famous project that has gone dormant and become its successor. Whisky with 15k stars was archived, but its former users and the people who starred it are still around, with nowhere to go. Media loves a successor story; Korben's headline was literally "Whisky's successor." The README spells out how the predecessor died and how the project avoids the same fate.
2. Borrow a one-liner that already works elsewhere. "A Mac version of ProtonDB" says it all, and the copy from wineformac, Korben, and GitHubDaily was built around that phrase.
3. Open-source the data as a separate public good. The data repo uses CC0, the methodology is public, contributors get an entry point (highball report submits game results in one command), and hundreds of long-tail pages are generated from the data in bulk.
4. Write a Chinese README first, then wait for the recommendation accounts. Chinese GitHub recommendation accounts plus a network of reposters was the project's second big amplifier; French- and Portuguese-speaking communities also passed it along.

If it were you

The verdict: B. The playbook is clear and copyable, but this position is already taken by Highball. Whether it's worth doing depends on whether you can find another "famous project gone dormant, open-source scene still empty" opening.

Who it's for: an old user of some ecosystem who has a project that's been unmaintained for over a year, with a few thousand to tens of thousands of stars, and who has the ability to keep maintaining it. Or someone holding material that can be organized into open data (compatibility, configs, recipes, benchmarks).

Who it's not for: anyone trying to build a second Highball in the Mac gaming space. Highball, Pixel Port, GameHub, and Bridgeplay already exist here. Anyone who can't ship releases consistently, since the biggest risk for a successor project is people deciding it's going to die too. Anyone hoping to make money from this, because this category pays in stars, reputation, and résumé value, not revenue.

How to do it: search GitHub for archived stars, or star projects with no commits in over a year whose issues keep climbing, and check their issues and forks for people asking "is there an alternative?" Put <predecessor>-alternative straight into the project name or topic tags. Put a line like "X, the <proven thing> version" on the first screen of the README. Put the data-friendly parts in a separate CC0 repo.

How to get users: first post in the subreddit or forum where the predecessor's users gather. That's where Highball's first 1,100 stars came from. Don't count on HN, whose Show HN only got 5 points. Second, pitch vertical media for a First Look. Third, add a Chinese README and then look for recommender accounts like GitHubDaily. On the website, use the data to generate long-tail pages and "vs predecessor" comparison pages to catch search traffic.

Timing: gaps left by an abandoned project don't stay empty for long. Whisky's gap sat open for 16 months, and two months after Highball took off, Bridgeplay appeared. Once you spot a gap, aim to ship a first usable release within a month.

Signs you've misread it: ① the abandoned project you picked has no one in its issues or forks looking for alternatives, which means its users already left and nobody is picking up the baton; ② your launch post doesn't get a few hundred stars within a week, and media and recommenders won't repeat your one-line pitch, which means the pitch doesn't hold; ③ back to Highball itself: if Pixel Port or GameHub goes open source or publishes compatibility data, the thing that made it unique on GitHub is gone.