14 DAY TRIAL // Despite improving substantially in the last couple of years, the Microsoft Store still has an app problem, as many large companies, such as Google, still aren’t interested in developing Windows 10 UWP apps.
As a result, you would expect Microsoft to make serious efforts to keep the existing developer base satisfied and encourage them to create new apps, but in the meantime, the company appears to be doing the opposite.
This weekend, for instance, the software giant has started asking developers whose apps use the term “Windows” in their names to rename or remove the apps from the Microsoft Store. Otherwise, the company would ban it itself.
The odd thing is that Microsoft reportedly sent the emails on Saturday and offered developers only a single day to take action, which means that this week, apps that haven’t removed the word “Windows” from their names could be pulled.
“Windows Store”
Microsoft’s email also mistakenly calls the Microsoft Store the “Windows Store,” which is actually the original name of the Store that was used after the launch of Windows 10 in July 2015.
At this point, it’s not known how many developers are affected by this sudden copyright infringement claim, but app makers who receive the email should switch to a different name as soon as possible.
Microsoft says that in addition to removing the infringing apps from the Microsoft Store, it could also terminate the developer account, in which case the rest of the other apps belonging to the same developer, if any, would be impacted as well.
A quick search in the Microsoft Store shows there are thousands of apps using the word “Windows” in their names, and it’s not known if Microsoft has emailed all developers or not. It remains to be seen if this is a mistake or the company does want to have these apps renamed, but we’ve contacted the company for more information and we’ll update the article when more info is available.