If you don't like the Universal Windows Platform, well. Don't release your games on it. I have heard Steam is a quite popular alternative...
Currently you can buy most games on Steam, and there's really no reason to buy the UWP version if it is also available on the Windows store - but if Microsoft continues to add UWP only features to Windows, then it might not be long before we see games where the UWP version has features that makes it superior to the version available on Steam - or they aren't released on Steam at all.
I agree with Sweeney that that is a worrying prospect.
UWP is a fully open ecosystem, available to every developer, and can be supported by any store. Broad range of tools http://bit.ly/1QIHTf0
It is interesting if true, but the devil is in the details, and Sweeney points out the similarities to Android, where you can technically side-load applications, but it is a pain in the ass, and I'm sure 99% of users couldn't be bothered to do so. Look at how much trouble Amazon has had getting people to use their app store on anything but 'Fire' devices.
Except you don't get to do all those things through the windows store. You don't install Chrome through the windows store, only the google app with 1 tab. No firefox on the windows store either. Is steam on the windows store? How long before the windows store becomes the principle method to get apps on your desktop? Sweeny's criticism resonates here: Sweeney then compared UWP to Google's Android, which is "technically open, but practically closed" thanks to how "comically difficult" it is for general users to sideload apps. "This is not merely a technical issue: it has the market impact of Google Play Store dominating over competing stores, despite not being very good," he says.
It's almost as if there is a War On General Purpose Computation... and the locked down malware "appliances" are winning.
This started with iOS; the people that should have recognized the dangers of a gatekeeper controlling who can develop or install software decided to embrace the shiny iPhone and later Apple's tables. Now, even Microsoft is getting into the "app store" market and stripping away the remnants of their platform that weren't locked down.
> sideload apps
Is that the new euphemism for "install software"? Once everyone is convinced installing software outside of the "official" app store is deviant or unusual, it will be easy to introduce a meme that 3rd party software is risky/harmful/immoral.
> "This is not merely a technical issue ..."
/sigh/
Even with Tim Sweeny's current explanation of the problem and Cory Doctorow's warnings[1][2] several years ago, I doubt many people - even HN readers in this very thread - will actually fight this trend or even change their behavior in any meaningful way. They will continue to give Microsoft money and market share. Instead, I expect down-votes and complaints from apologists that pretend this is for "security", true-believers that pretend this trend to lock everything down doesn't exist, and willfully-blind nerds that think jailbreaking devices is a long-term solution.
It's not my opinion that jailbreaking isn't a long-term solution to the lockdown of the General Purpose Computer. Jailbreaking isn't available in all situations, it may involve legal risk, it often requires technical knowledge, and it can impact the relationship with the manufacture such as voiding a warranty.
As for the term "willfully blind", how would you describe someone who denies facts?
You may not like certain facts, but they still exist.
After briefly introducing himself as a visitor from MIT, Stallman requested a copy of the laser-printer source code so that he could port it to the PDP-11. To his surprise, the professor refused to grant his request.
"It was my first encounter with a nondisclosure agreement, and it immediately taught me that nondisclosure agreements have victims," says Stallman, firmly. "In this case I was the victim. [My lab and I] were victims."
"When somebody invited me to betray all my colleagues in that way, I remembered how angry I was when somebody else had done that to me and my whole lab," Stallman says. "So I said, `Thank you very much for offering me this nice software package, but I can't accept it on the conditions that you're asking for, so I'm going to do without it.'"
Boycotts usually require sacrifice. Do you want to pay that cost now? Or are you going to signal approval to Microsoft by rewarding them with money or market share?
> as long as you have custom setting
That is going to be a never ending treadmill of fixes whenever Microsoft wants to push out changes. If you wake up tomorrow and discover that a new patch for Windows was installed, do you have the disassembled code and/or packet logs to actually know that your "custom settings" are still intact?
But none of that really matters - using "custom settings" is still telling Microsoft that you're fine with their locked "appliances". They will only change course when they see either their revenue or market share start to decrease.
Do you want to make the sacrifices necessary to send that signal now? Or do you want to wait until the costs are even higher?
How long before the [Windows Store] UWP becomes the principle method to get Microsoft Office and Visual Studio, Adobe Photoshop and Premiere, Intuit, iTunes, Lotus Notes,, AutoCAD and roughly 10m more programs?
How long before 100m in-house business programs are only available in UWP versions?
You really think that Microsoft could block the Win32 API when the vast majority of Windows programs -- including its own programs -- depend on it?
Note: don't confuse "Windows Store" with UWP. Windows Store is just a download site, not an API.
Never. The attempt to unify across devices probably sounded like a good idea, but doesn't really make a lot of sense for anything that isn't a toy.
Unless Microsoft wants to cut the throats of all the vendors that made its operating system dominant, it's not going to get rid of Win32 applications running on the desktop.
"The specific problem here is that Microsoft's shiny new 'Universal Windows Platform' is locked down, and by default it’s impossible to download UWP apps from the websites of publishers and developers, to install them, update them, and conduct commerce in them outside of the Windows Store," said Sweeney. "It's true that if you dig far enough into Microsoft's settings-burying UI, you can find a way to install these apps by enabling 'side-loading.' But in turning this off by default, Microsoft is unfairly disadvantaging the competition."
This is a boiling-the-frog kind of situation. They do just enough to get people today to accept what they're doing, then the next steps come later.
There are basically three tiers of OS application openness in recent years:
At the top, you have old Windows, GNU/Linux, and older versions of Mac OS. You can download and run programs all you want.
Down a level, the OS by default stops you from installing anything you want, but there is a settings option to disable this feature. This is done for security, because you would much rather non-tech users be restricted to only installing from your curated appstore than from random downloads off the Internet. This is the modern OSX / Android model.
At the bottom, we have iOS. You can only install and run programs through the system appstore, without option.
Of all these platforms, iOS makes by far the most revenue per user for developers, and since with walled garden restricted appstores you rent seek a large portion of app sales, as the platform owner you also make the most money when developers make the most revenue - 30%.
So you are Microsoft's board in a nice executive suite in Redmond. You look down the coast and see those Cupertino guys making tremendous amounts of effectively free money because they don't have to lift a finger - their army of third party developers are making software they get to profit off of. This revenue made Apple the most valuable company in the world for over a year. Your company is losing market share on every front. You want that money.
Apple themselves are already moving OSX towards their iOS model, because of its profitability. Microsoft naturally will want to do so the same. They will be cautious, but it is the optimization of their revenue models if they can pull it off successfully - they just have to maintain "business" editions and contracts of their OS for companies currently using their computers because large corporate entities are much less likely to put up with usurping rent seeking app stores - so you just keep giving them versions with unlocked program installation, while the consumers can all be stuck using your store for everything without recourse, all the while you rake in wonderful 30% per sale.
This is not even really speculation, because legally the Microsoft board must act in the interests of their shareholders. All it is is a question of when, when you can flip that switch and take that last island of user freedom, the moment when the loss of users to open platforms (which would, even today, be extremely tiny) poses no threat to the dramatic revenue you could extract from the platform taking that sweet sweet 30% of all software sales. Because the writing is on the wall, and the evidence is hundreds of billions of dollars in your face that this model creates an infinite money machine. You just have to properly soothe the leprechaun into letting you steal the pot of gold.
I dispute this claim heavily, especially as free versions of games tend to dominate, whereas on other platforms $60 games being bought but tons of users is the norm.
Does the average ios user of a free app really spend $60 on Itchy and Scratchy money? Doubtful, whereas every user of $AAA_GAME here does.
Note, even making the "whales" argument where some users dump inordinate amount of cash on things isn't very convincing because there are similar situations going on with say valve games and hats.
I agree.