Game developers weigh in on the openness of Microsoft’s Windows 10 platform

Tim Sweeney is one of the best-known technical experts in the game industry and the CEO of Gears of War creator Epic Games. He kicked off a big debate over the openness of Windows earlier this month when he wrote an opinion piece that warned about Microsoft’s moves with Windows 10 to close off its Windows app store and compromise the openness of the Windows PC.

Sweeney expanded upon that theme with a technical description of what it will require for Windows to remain an open platform. In response, Microsoft’s Kevin Gallo, the corporate VP for Windows, said, “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.”