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Epic boss thinks Microsoft will make Steam "progressively worse" with new Windows 10 updates [Update]

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has once again voiced his concerns regarding Microsoft's Universal Windows Platform (UWP), this time saying that Steam will be made to run worse on Windows 10 in the next few years.

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Update:

Microsoft has responded to Sweeney's comments, telling Game Informer that though it still has work to do, UWP remains an open platform.

"Tim is a respected figure in the gaming world, and we value his feedback," a Microsoft rep told the site. "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 recognise there is still work to be done, but we want to make Windows the best development platform regardless of technologies used."

Original story: It's no secret that Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Gears of War developer Epic - a once close friend of Microsoft - is not very happy with the company's Universal Windows Platform (UWP).

Sweeney criticised the closed nature of the platform in the past, particularly how you couldn't side-load UWP apps on Windows 10. It appears his fears are much larger than UWP limitations, as a recent interview in Edge Magazine seems to suggest.

"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," he told the magazine, as reported by MSPowerUser.

"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.

"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 seems 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," Sweeney added.

Though he believes this to be a possibility, Sweeney said that Microsoft "might not be competent enough" to actually bring this plan to fruition.

"They make a bunch of statements that sound vaguely like they’re promoting openness, but really they’re not promising anything of the sort," he went on.

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Sherif Saed

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Sherif (he/him) is VG247’s go-to shooter and Souls-likes person. Whether it’s news, reviews, or op-eds – Sherif is always eager to tell you about video games. He's one of VG247's most veteran writers, with 10+ years experience on the site.

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