Epic CEO once again dumps on Windows, says it will start making Steam worse

Competition is great

Miss this saga? It’s a great one.

Roughly four months ago, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney popped off on Microsoft, saying that the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) is closed, and that “all independent companies…[should] oppose this.” This led to Phil Spencer issuing an “it’s open, actually!” statement, which Sweeney seemed to take to, stating that he “likes the sound of this.” All good, right? Wrong.

Here we are in July, and Sweeney is firing back at a new problem with UWP. He claims that Microsoft, in an attempt to sabotage Steam, will effectively make the platform worse. Sweeney explains that they’ll do it gradually, stating: “The risk here is that if Microsoft convinces everybody 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.”

It’s a pretty straight-forward accusation, and one that makes perfect sense, given that Windows is a full-on OS that also houses a store that’s in direct competition with Steam. Microsoft once again replied by claiming that UWP is open, and that they “value Tim’s feedback,” and even though “there’s more work to be done,” they still want to make it the “best” platform.

Okay so that doesn’t really directly address Sweeney’s concerns, but that’s what we’re left with at the moment. It doesn’t help his case that UWP is ingrained in Win32 though.

Tim Sweeney [Edge Magazine via Game Informer]