Tim Sweeney is missing the point; the PC platform needs fixing

Gears of War: Ultimate Edition for Windows 10 is one of the few UWP games currently available. (credit: Microsoft Studios)

Epic Games' Tim Sweeney wrote an opinion piece in The Guardian saying that Microsoft's Universal Windows Platform (UWP)—the common development platform that covers Windows, Windows Mobile, HoloLens, and soon, Xbox One—"can, should, must, and will die." Sweeney's complaint is that UWP is locked down. By default, UWP apps can only be installed and purchased through Microsoft's store, and they have to run from a sandboxed environment. So some Windows features are, or will be, only available to UWP apps. In this way, Sweeney says that Microsoft is "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," especially as Microsoft makes some Windows features UWP-only.

Sweeney wants UWP to either be destroyed or made "open" in the same way that the traditional Win32 API is "open." This is in three parts: he wants UWP apps to be downloadable and installable from the Web by default (without needing to change any settings or enable sideloading), he wants third parties to be able to create their own storefronts for UWP apps, and he wants it to always be possible for developers to sell directly to users without Microsoft taking a 30 percent cut.

This is a strange complaint for two main reasons. The first issue is that the UWP lock-down is, overall, a positive thing. The second is that there doesn't appear to be anything preventing third-party downloads, third-party storefronts, and third-party billing right now.

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