Epic Games Boss Sounds Off On Microsoft's UMP Initiative
Microsoft has noted how they want to put a focus on PC gaming, and ensure quality for all. As such, they made an initiative called the Universal Windows Platform, where PC games will be made in one way to help simplify the process.
Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney notes in a piece for The Guardian that this is wrong, as it forces developers to either “make games for Windows” or don’t make PC Games.
“They’re 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.”
“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.”
Microsoft has heard this complaint, and wrote a response to the Guardian article, seemingly rebuking many of Sweeney’s complaints:
“The Universal Windows Platform is a fully open ecosystem, available to every developer, that can be supported by any store.We continue to make improvements for developers; for example, in the Windows 10 November Update, we enabled people to easily side-load apps by default, with no UX required.
“We want to make Windows the best development platform regardless of technologies used, and offer tools to help developers with existing code bases of HTML/JavaScript, .NET and Win32, C+ + and Objective-C bring their code to Windows, and integrate UWP capabilities.
“With Xamarin, UWP developers can not only reach all Windows 10 devices, but they can now use a large percentage of their C# code to deliver a fully native mobile app experiences for iOS and Android. We also posted a blog on our development tools recently.”