Tim Sweeney claims that Microsoft will remove Win32, destroy Steam
arstechnica.comThe article states straight up that Win32 is used in way too many applications for Microsoft to ditch it wholesale in the foreseeable future.
What they can do is tweak around the edges to make Steam perform poorly and theoretically make the Windows app store more appealing, but that got a little bit tinfoil hat for me. I won't say it's unheard of, but they've already been under investigation once for these kinds of shenanigans and it doesn't look like we're going to have a friendly administration come in to pull their feet out of the fire this time.
Microsoft's ugly history is full of sketchy shenanigans, like the time it seemed like they were working to make sure WordPerfect wouldn't run in DOS due to subtle, breaking changes to the API (http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/ancient-microsoft-nov...) or those occasions where they were suspected of kneecapping Lotus in much the same way (http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done...).
The new Microsoft leadership seems more interested in building bridges than in crushing and destroying companies Ballmer style, but I could be wrong. Removing win32 seems like a huge mistake both from an optics perspective and because of its impact on partners.
Whether Sweeney is right or not, this whole discussion illustrates exactly why it behooves everybody (except Microsoft, I suppose) to switch to an F/OSS OS like Linux or a BSD. Everybody is trying to make their platform a walled garden, and the "war on general purpose computing" still rages as well. Using an F/OSS operating system, and open hardware platforms as much as possible, is essential to keeping computing open to everyone.
With more and more games coming out for MacOS and Linux I think there is a good chance that gamers would just jump ship. People are incredibly invested both monetarily and emotionally in Steam.
Jumping shift? We don't just use a PC for gaming all day. Read the article, please.
And the author of the article disagrees.