It almost looks like Microsoft is telling users and developers to go to Linux are they really that stupid?

Another reason why developers should go Vulkan so we can game on linux rather than windows. If they start using vulkan then i will sure jump to linux for gaming or even have a dedicated drive for windows and one for Linux.

Classical Doomsday preaching i say. We had that always over past 20 years, and look where gaming is now. I am sure its going to be just fine.

How what when. This seems tinfoil level stuff. If MS starts to break steam just what and we are already seeing this?

HaHA Tim just needs to stop being such a cry baby and get an UWP steam app out the door they've had time to prepare they knew it was coming but sat on their hands and buried their heads in the sand

Not completely. I do not know about your experience, but I have been in insider program from start. And MS patches broke VirtualBox functionality, then guys fixed it over course of some months and MS quickly made another changes which broke it again for months. Rinse and repeat. Doing this to tech crowd has no effect as they just move to linux for what they need. But doing this to average consumer and you have person ditching their favorite game distribution platform as it is more convenient that switching OS.

Sure things break from time to time. But win32 is going nowhere which seemed to be the biggest fear for Tim. I'm guessing VirtualBox now works fine?

As I said in the other thread. I don't see this happening unless MS wants another monopoly style lawsuit like they had with the EU in the past. I can see Valve sue them for that reason.

Weren't Microsoft involved in some scandal a bunch of years ago where the were sabotaging other peoples software? I might just be thinking of that episode of the Simpson with the Krusty dolls that destroy stuff though

Things are bound to break in the insiders program, that's kinda the point. It's the difference between the average and more experienced PC user, those with more experience tinker and often break stuff, but usually increase their experience fixing it. The average user is usually scared to touch anything, which is why I find it strange that easy lifers sign up for it. Tim must think people are gullible if he thinks anyone will believe this, if anything it sounds like a way to divert from the fact Steam can be rather buggy, and that W10 is growing very quickly in the Steam Stats surveys.

Makes perfect sense to me. I have read about testers within the insiders program complain about certain games not working correctly. I even forgot about the Insiders program. To me this Tim dude is trying to stir crap here. Phil Spencer commented on Steam's sucess about a month ago.

Tinfoil is strong with this one.

Yeah I don't know about the whole breaking win32 stuff -- Microsoft has done similar before but breaking win32 would put their entire business market at risk. That being said, I do think they will favor UWP going forward. Most of the new features will be centered around UWP apps and they are going to do everything they can to retain control over UWP. IIRC you're going to be able to get UWP apps through the steam store though -- so I'm not sure it would end up mattering anyway. Regardless Epic's new UE build can publish to UWP now, came out like yesterday. So I'm sure Tim Sweeney is having a bit of a mental crisis right now. He's contributed so much to gaming though -- if he wants to go off every once in a while I think people should just tolerate it. Unreal Engine pretty good.

Weren't Microsoft involved in some scandal a bunch of years ago where the were sabotaging other peoples software? I might just be thinking of that episode of the Simpson with the Krusty dolls that destroy stuff though

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish

On Office documents: In a memo to the Office product group in 1998, Bill Gates stated: "One thing we have got to change in our strategy—allowing Office documents to be rendered very well by other peoples [sic] browsers is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company. We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends [sic] on PROPRIETARY IE capabilities. Anything else is suicide for our platform. This is a case where Office has to avoid doing something to destory [sic] Windows." [emphasis in original][14]

That's just one example. That's why I kind of find it funny that people make it sound like it's so far fetched. At the time Netscape Navigator had a huge marketshare, like 80%. Then Microsoft used it's monopoly in other products, like office, to break the view on netscape. They did the same thing with Active X controls. Which basically forced people to use IE for compatibility. It's pretty much identical to what tim is saying here -- although breaking Win32 is a little more of a risk then breaking office the way they did.

Pretty sure that if this actually was a thing or got in any way bad, that Valve could take MS to court, and probably win. Problem solved. Wouldn't put it past MS though, big business bottom line and all that. What if people worked together instead of trying to f*ck each other over, sounds good to me.

LOL this is BS. And no I don't mean them making steam "run worse". Which is ludicrous of course...I mean the entire article is BS. People will believe anything thesedays

I'm not sure how Microsoft could "phase out Win32 apps" Since that is still 90% of the software running across their OS's. I'm gonna have to say this article is false lol.

I'm not sure how Microsoft could "phase out Win32 apps" Since that is still 90% of the software running across their OS's. I'm gonna have to say this article is false lol.

I think it's pretty clear that they are pushing UWP as the main app model going forward. Pretty much every new feature in Win10, their dev environments, etc, is all aimed at UWP. They are unifying UWP to work across phones, desktops, xbox, TV's and Hololense. Obviously I don't think Win32 is going to vanish overnight, neither does Sweeney, but it's essentially going to stop being supported by them -- and unless UWP becomes more open, it will cause some issues. I don't think it will be at the level Sweeney is describing, but yeah.

Who's really the bad guy? I have steam and I use steam but I don't like steam. I want to purchase, download and own my game, on my machine, that sits on my computer and runs without internet or any other service when ever I want to play that game. I don't care to register with this account or that account or load this bs app or that bs app to connect in order to play my game. Both Steam and MS suck.

Ok i got to comment. This guy is ****** and living in conspiracy land. He literally has zero evidence and pulls this stuff out of thin air 🙄 He's no John Carmack. Also, with MS's Project Centennial it converts Win32 software to UWP "apps", which can be installed/downloaded from anywhere just like any other software (no Store needed). ** moderator - mind your language please.

Sweeney has been incredibly nearsighted since he dropped the PC as his primary development platform years ago--he sees *everything* through the prism of consoles--his universe is tiny and cramped. Developers decide what platform(s) to sell their games on--not Microsoft. UWP sucks, frankly, as most people know--nobody with a gaming PC is going to be very interested in running cell-phone graphics on his PC--only some dummy @ Microsoft might think otherwise. Quantum Break was truly an ugly game--really, really nasty looking--a blur fest. UWP is a bad idea and it has no legs. Sweeney is wrong--again. Microsoft hasn't stopped supporting Win32 and has no plans to do so. And copying Apple is the worst thing Microsoft can ever do--I think the company learned that through the Win8 & Win Phone fiasco. Microsoft can't successfully "copy" Apple any more than Apple can successfully do what Microsoft does. Sweeney--the same guy who fifteen years ago said, "In 20 years the GPU won't exist." He's simply trying to draw some publicity towards himself, now that consoles have been absorbed by the x86 PC platform. The x86 PC has won the gaming platform wars and Sweeney is all sour grapes because of it, apparently. Very unprofessional behavior on his part.

Sweeney has been incredibly nearsighted since he dropped the PC as his primary development platform years ago--he sees *everything* through the prism of consoles--his universe is tiny and cramped. Developers decide what platform(s) to sell their games on--not Microsoft. UWP sucks, frankly, as most people know--nobody with a gaming PC is going to be very interested in running cell-phone graphics on his PC--only some dummy @ Microsoft might think otherwise. Quantum Break was truly an ugly game--really, really nasty looking--a blur fest. UWP is a bad idea and it has no legs. Sweeney is wrong--again. Microsoft hasn't stopped supporting Win32 and has no plans to do so. And copying Apple is the worst thing Microsoft can ever do--I think the company learned that through the Win8 & Win Phone fiasco. Microsoft can't successfully "copy" Apple any more than Apple can successfully do what Microsoft does. Sweeney--the same guy who fifteen years ago said, "In 20 years the GPU won't exist." He's simply trying to draw some publicity towards himself, now that consoles have been absorbed by the x86 PC platform. The x86 PC has won the gaming platform wars and Sweeney is all sour grapes because of it, apparently. Very unprofessional behavior on his part.

UWP has nothing to do with the way a game looks. He said in 20 years GPU's wouldn't exist as they do today -- they'd become more programmable similar to CPUs. And they definitely have. With Compute Shaders, IF, advancements in CUDA/OpenCL -- they definitely became far more than just graphics processing units.

pfff what a bunch of bs... since the start, Steam (despite being popular) is full of bug without any Microsoft action... i don't think that Microsoft will spend time doing Steam bug... Steam already do it very fine by itself 🙂 lol Also Steambox OS run not so good... doing a cause/effect to this anouncement is maybe too easy...

We sorta knew this would happen though. Of course MS wants everything to run through their own app/store and the best way for them to do that is to slowly get rid of Win32 programs and make it all run through their Universal Windows Platform BS. They use the Virus excuse to justify it, the problem is that a lot of people won't use the Windows store and will never use it. We have already seen them back track with some games and once Devs realize most people won't use MS store then they are forced to use Steam or GoG or Whatever site to get their games. The idea is to rid the world of Malware/Viruses but the more they push for this type of system the more people will be forced to find ways around it and that means Piracy/Torrents will only increase and Viruses will only be spread even more than now defeating the purpose that it set out to fix. I worry that if Hillary Clinton gets in power she will be terrible for Internet related stuff and all those privacy issues and government spying will go through the roof, not because of pirates or trolls but because we need saving for all those evil terrorists.