Epic Games' Tim Sweeney Is Warning Of Microsoft's Closed Gaming Ecosystem

[stevenc]

working to turn today’s open PC ecosystem into a closed, Microsoft-controlled distribution and commerce monopoly

F/OSS distros, wave from the other side of the fence...

Even if SteamOS boots into the proprietary Steam client usually, the rest of the platform (primarily just Debian/Ubuntu) is obviously free for any publisher to distribute their games on. Valve had incredible foresight after all, they've reserved themselves a chair for when the music stops.

[GuercH]

As long as MS doesn't stop traditional programs from functioning, this shouldn't be a problem. Developers can just keep staying away from Metro, and keep on what they've been doing for many years. Can they make a game using Vulkan or OpenGL and compile it with GCC to any platform, then sell it on Steam, GOG, and various distribution platforms? I'm sure they can. The only result will be having little to no games in the MS Store.

It's a problem of control, to publish on microsoft platform you need to follow the rules, so if you want your game on XBOX you need to sign up for this, you will get pc access as a bonus, they want this, they want this bad! that's why they want to de-emphasize charging for windows, so windows becomes even more ubiquitous as a platform, and only if you control the platform you can charge money for it. Valve understands the danger here, i sure hope blizzard and others understand this too.

[Kano]

Using Steam is nicer for games, as it supports Linux and OS X too. The other way MS Store is always involved and supports mainly Win 10 and Xbox One. Epic has basically no own store, only EA and Valve. But maybe they wanted to create a new one - but that would not be only against MS but against EA/Valve too.

[pracedru]

It will be very exciting to see if Microsoft can Hinder migration to SteamOS/GNULinux.

[eydee]

As long as MS doesn't stop traditional programs from functioning, this shouldn't be a problem. Developers can just keep staying away from Metro, and keep on what they've been doing for many years. Can they make a game using Vulkan or OpenGL and compile it with GCC to any platform, then sell it on Steam, GOG, and various distribution platforms? I'm sure they can. The only result will be having little to no games in the MS Store.

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Epic Games' Tim Sweeney Is Warning Of Microsoft's Closed Gaming Ecosystem

Epic Games' Tim Sweeny has written a lengthy op-ed coming out against Microsoft's Universal Windows Platform (UWP) effort that would close up the Windows gaming ecosystem as "a closed platform-within-a-platform into Windows 10."..

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Epic-OpEd-Windows-UWP