CEO and co-founder of Epic Games, Tim Sweeney has spoken out strongly against Microsoft’s proposed Universal Windows 10 Platform.
In an interview with Edge Magazine, Sweeney lambasted Microsoft for making “a bunch of statements that sound vaguely like they’re promising openness but really they’re not promising anything of the sort.”
“The risk here is that, if Microsoft convinces everyone to use UWP, 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 maneuvers. 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 5 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 seem 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 might not be competent enough to succeed with their plan but they are certainly trying.”
You can read the full extract from interview here.
Are you worried about how Windows 10 will affect PC Gaming? Let us know in the comments below and in our forums.
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I still have mixed feelings about Windows 10 and how it performs on my PC and notebook, but I find that one day as much as I hate it, other days it’s not so bad. It just doesn’t feel as polished as one would expect – lots of little niggles on both systems. And yes, backwards compatibility is a concern. I have 2 old flight sim games (both Microsoft BTW), the older one doesn’t work at all, and the other seems buggy – they both worked perfectly fine in Windows 7. As long as Microsoft sorts out all the bugs and little annoyances, Windows 10 can be worth keeping, it’s been forced down our throats, so it is important that they at least make it palatable.
And yes, FREE is something to consider – Windows 10 feels like a “free” app from any apps store, it is free to get, but either full of adverts, or has “in-app purchases” as a means to generate revenue.