14 DAY TRIAL // Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney isn’t the biggest Windows 10 fan, even though the recent releases might prove otherwise, so it shouldn’t come as a big surprise that he criticizes Microsoft on pretty much every single occasion.
Most recently, Sweeney blamed Microsoft for trying to kill Steam by creating a closed Windows system that would require developers to bring their apps to the Windows Store and focus on the universal Windows app concept.
And yet, in a statement released by Microsoft today, Redmond denies all these claims and explains that Windows 10 is a fully open ecosystem and ensures that the company has no intention of killing Steam, Win32 or whomever Sweeney believes it might be trying to kill.
“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,” Microsoft is quoted as saying in a statement released today.
Sweeney doesn’t buy it
Sweeney, on the other hand, expects this kind of statements and anticipated this response in the interview he had earlier this week. He claimed that Microsoft turns to “sneaky PR statements” to respond to allegations and added that although “they’re promoting openness, they’re not promising anything of the sort.”
“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,” Sweeney stated.
This isn’t the first time when Microsoft responds to Tim Sweeney, but for some reason, the Epic Games founder continues to be somewhat picky in his relationship with the company. Until now, Redmond has reacted in the most gentlemanish way, but who knows that the future brings us if Sweeney keeps accusing Microsoft of the same thing over and over again?