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Steam On Windows 10 Will Get 'Progressively Worse': Gears of War Developer (ndtv.com)
Microsoft's Universal Windows Platform, or UWP, approach isn't sitting well with many game developers. Four months after criticising UWP ecosystem for being a walled-garden, curtailing "users' freedom to install full-featured PC software, and subverting the rights of developers and publishers to maintain a direct relationship with their customers," Tim Sweeney, co-founder of Epic Games, the studio behind the Gears of War and Unreal franchises has once again lashed out at the Redmond-based company. He alleges that Microsoft plans to make Steam -- the world's largest PC gaming platform, "progressively worse and more broken." in a move to bolster people's reliance on the Windows Store. From a Gadgets 360 report: "Slowly, over the next five 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," Sweeney said. He adds the outcome of this would be forcing every app and game to be sold through the Windows Store alone. "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 manoeuvres. 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," he claims.
I hate having to deal with all the sneaky updates.
If all you use your machine for is games, just turn off Windows Update once you've got SP1 installed on Windows 7. IF (and it's a big IF) your machine gets compromised - who cares. It's a games machine. Wipe. Reinstall. No data to worry about. Heck Steam even keeps most of your save games in the cloud nowadays anyway.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Nope, but it does reset the browser default to Edge.
I don't see this as EEE per se, but it's another example of MS being a poor imitation of Apple.
MS is jealous of Apple's business model, which controls the entire platform end to end and monetizes it. As a result they have been aggressively pushing people to Windows 10 and will continue to sever links between users and (anyone but MS).
MS wants the walled garden and wants the App Store. They want to control music and software and movies and everything, as Apple does for most users.
The difference is that Apple users opted in to that ecosystem by buying Apple products. MS just wants to throw a bag over your head and have you wake up in their walled garden.
They're trying to Retcon the past decade that Apple's been eating their lunch.
I don't see how MS can just patch out Steam until it's too buggy to use, then shuffle in the windows store. This is exactly what they did with Netscape and IE back in the day, and that worked gangbusters.
Netscape vs IE
WordPerfect Office vs MS Office
DOS vs Dr. DOS/CPM-DOS/etc
POSIX vs Win32
Xenix vs UNIX
It's the oldest play in MS's playbook.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)