You can use the community product to make commercial software: https://www.quora.com/Can-startups-use-Microsoft-Visual-Studio-Community-for-development-of-comme

You can use the community product to make commercial software: https://www.quora.com/Can-startups-use-Microsoft-Visual-Studio-Community-for-development-of-commercial-applications https://www.quora.com/Can-startups-use-Microsoft-Visual-Stud... The windows app store store does take a cut, though it seems to be reduced to 15%: https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2018/05/07/a-new-microsoft-store-revenue-share-is-coming/ https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2018/05/07/a-new-micr... But even if it was just a hearts and minds exercise - why do you want hearts and minds? As a strategic play to support other parts of your business, i.e. Windows, even if it's not the Windows store. In any case, it doesn't really matter the specifics are at MS now, you could look at Android or iOS instead, where the dev tools are free and they are definitely taking a 30% cut, and contrast that to a few decades ago where you had to shell out a few thousand dollars if you wanted MS' dev tools at all. Or take a look at Unity which has a subscription, which people are pretty happy with.