4 ms·

I'm confused, can't Steam just release as a free Universal App? Also, with Steam's push towards Linux support this would be a dangerous strategy for Microsoft.

I'm confused, can't Steam just release as a free Universal App? Also, with Steam's push towards Linux support this would be a dangerous strategy for Microsoft. Gaming is what drives a lot of people to Windows over other platforms. If Microsoft actively makes Steam unusable on Windows there's no reason to think people won't just seek out a better platform for Steam.

cmiles74 10y ago
I don't think MS will allow a Univeral App that installs other Universal Apps. Just like Apple, they'll have a list of restrictions on what these apps can do. After all, a sandbox app that can arbitrarily install any other app is not very sandboxy.
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  There's nothing wrong with allowing one app to install another, but the key is, if you can't leave the sandbox, you request the OS do it for you. Android apps are sandboxed, and can install other apps, but you get an OS interstitial asking if you want to do it. Similarly, a UWP app could conceivably be allowed to trigger the install of another UWP app, but it would pop-up a Windows box, not unlike a UAC elevation prompt, showing the app name, publisher if properly signed, and requesting the user permission to go forward with the install.
  - cmiles74 10y ago
    You make a good point, in the Android world you can manually install the Amazon Underground application and grant it the ability to install it's own apps. I don't believe there's a similar side-loading method on iOS, however: Apple has take steps to prevent this. IMHO, I expect Microsoft to release a solution more like Apple's App Store and less like Google. Clearly, Epic Games' founder has the same concerns. He's also expressed concern with Microsoft only allowing something like Steam to be installed via side-loading, which he thinks provides a barrier to entry that is too high. I tend to agree, it's easy to slowly make side-loading more and more difficult as time goes on, or to make more and more critical APIs unavailable to non-UWP applications.
    - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
      Steam is only available via sideloading now. You have to go to a website and download the installer and run it manually. This is how Windows has always worked. UWP will allow the same, but is simply a more secure application format which can't easily contain malware. The only difference is Microsoft now also offers an app store.
nkassis 10y ago
MS isn't doing any of the open sourcing from the goodness of their heart. They see that to stay competitive in the development tools space and cloud development space they need to open up their tech and make it work everywhere so they can sell services and tools to you. "I see you like linux? no problem here is our cool .net core platform you can use to build for linux. Btw you can run it on our azure linux instances and use all our easily integrated azure services to go with it. And with our new cross platform editor, a lot of this will be a couple clicks away."

cmiles74 10y ago

I don't think MS will allow a Univeral App that installs other Universal Apps. Just like Apple, they'll have a list of restrictions on what these apps can do. After all, a sandbox app that can arbitrarily install any other app is not very sandboxy.

ocdtrekkie 10y ago
There's nothing wrong with allowing one app to install another, but the key is, if you can't leave the sandbox, you request the OS do it for you. Android apps are sandboxed, and can install other apps, but you get an OS interstitial asking if you want to do it. Similarly, a UWP app could conceivably be allowed to trigger the install of another UWP app, but it would pop-up a Windows box, not unlike a UAC elevation prompt, showing the app name, publisher if properly signed, and requesting the user permission to go forward with the install.
- cmiles74 10y ago
  You make a good point, in the Android world you can manually install the Amazon Underground application and grant it the ability to install it's own apps. I don't believe there's a similar side-loading method on iOS, however: Apple has take steps to prevent this. IMHO, I expect Microsoft to release a solution more like Apple's App Store and less like Google. Clearly, Epic Games' founder has the same concerns. He's also expressed concern with Microsoft only allowing something like Steam to be installed via side-loading, which he thinks provides a barrier to entry that is too high. I tend to agree, it's easy to slowly make side-loading more and more difficult as time goes on, or to make more and more critical APIs unavailable to non-UWP applications.
  - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
    Steam is only available via sideloading now. You have to go to a website and download the installer and run it manually. This is how Windows has always worked. UWP will allow the same, but is simply a more secure application format which can't easily contain malware. The only difference is Microsoft now also offers an app store.

nkassis 10y ago

MS isn't doing any of the open sourcing from the goodness of their heart. They see that to stay competitive in the development tools space and cloud development space they need to open up their tech and make it work everywhere so they can sell services and tools to you. "I see you like linux? no problem here is our cool .net core platform you can use to build for linux. Btw you can run it on our azure linux instances and use all our easily integrated azure services to go with it. And with our new cross platform editor, a lot of this will be a couple clicks away."