Tim Sweeney claims that Microsoft will remove Win32, destroy Steam

Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney. (credit: Epic Games)

Tim Sweeney doesn't like Windows 10 or Microsoft's Universal Windows Platform, the common development platform that allows developers to create software that can run on Windows on PCs, phones, tablets, HoloLens, and the Xbox. In March he published an op-ed in The Guardian saying that UWP "can, should, must, and will die" because, he claimed, Microsoft could use UWP to create a walled garden, with UWP games not available through competing stores such as Steam. Still apparently concerned with the health of the PC gaming industry, Sweeney is now claiming, through an interview with the print-only Edge magazine, that Microsoft will use Windows updates to kill Steam.

Sweeney's complaints about UWP were technically off-base. His issues are based on the assumption that all UWP apps had to be individually vetted by Microsoft and could only be delivered by the Windows Store. This was somewhat true in Windows 8-apps built using the WinRT platform (the predecessor branding to UWP) could not be trivially sideloaded, as the ability was officially restricted to enterprise users only. But it's not true in Windows 10. Sideloading is enabled by default in Windows 10, and any third-party store could download and install UWP-based games in much the same way as they already do for software that uses the Win32 API.

Sweeney's Steam concerns are once again driven by UWP:

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