Microsoft attempts to reassure Tim Sweeney once again

A few days ago we heard of Microsoft's master plan to crush Steam and the whole Win32 ecosystem and force all apps through the Windows Store via subtly undermining the foundation of free development on Windows, a process which Epic Games's Tim Sweeney, the proponent of the idea, without providing any evidence, says has started already.

Tim claimed:

"The risk here is that, if Microsoft convinces everybody to use UWP (Universal Windows Platform), then they phase out Win32 apps. If they can succeed in doing that then it's a small leap to forcing all apps and games to be distributed through the Windows Store. Once we reach that point, the PC has become a closed platform."

"It won't be that one day they flip a switch that will break your Steam library – what they're trying to do is a series of sneaky manoeuvres. They make it more and more inconvenient to use the old apps, and, simultaneously, they try to become the only source for the new ones."

"Slowly, over the next five years, they will force-patch Windows 10 to make Steam progressively worse and more broken. They'll never completely break it, but will continue to break it until, in five years, people are so fed up that Steam is buggy that the Windows Store seems like an ideal alternative. That's exactly what they did to their previous competitors in other areas. Now they're doing it to Steam. It's only just starting to become visible."

Microsoft has of course attempted to reassure Tim in the past and now in a statement to GameInformer a Microsoft spokesman has tried again, saying:

"Tim is a respected figure in the gaming world, and we value his feedback. As stated previously, the Universal Windows Platform is a fully open ecosystem that is available to every developer, and can be supported by any store. It's early, and we recognize there is still work to be done, but we want to make Windows the best development platform regardless of technologies used."

Of course I think Tim remains unconvinced, having previously said:,

"They make a bunch of statements that sound vaguely like they're promoting openness, but really they're not promising anything of the sort."

We don't think short of closing down the Windows Store Tim will ever be mollified, so we look forward to his return in 3 months with another outlandish windows store related conspiracy theory.

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