Ironically Gears of War is owned by the very party Sweeney is attacking here. :P

I do and many others continue to do. How much astroturfing goes into any side I don't debate. but the crux of the most legitimate concerns is that steams monopoly creates evidence of discrimination in the market whereby currency that should have equal value is devalued based on it's relation to the digital citizen it's coming from.

Hell just looking at the retail segment shows you something wrong being done (you can be a store, but your forced to sell products that give a cut to your more successful competition WTF?!?).
At the end of the day it's companies that take other companies to court because a) they are more unified and b) they generally know they have enough money to throw at the problem with the impetus that doing so keeps them in business.
There was in fact some legal backlash against steam in relation to that very fact by retailers, unfortunately it didn't get far.

Then again and not to be too pessimistic over the legitimacy of our legal systems when a vintage crop farmers business is 'contaminated' by a neighboring GMO upstart and he cannot gain victory in the courts for easily provable & linked damages for at the very least flagrantly unethical business practice (setting up with a crop that you know may contaminatem but do nothing to prevent) you tend to realize that what is right and should be done quite often is not.
Modern legal systems are about money and gamers generally speaking are a cheap lot of bastards that just want to unwind or wall themselves out of relaity.
Oh they'll get their panties in a twist, they may puff themselves up better than a shitsu that accidentally gets into the clothes drier, but when there's real work to be done with things that should concern them generally speaking they become all talk.

Valve has set themselves as a monopoly, and did so by advising publishers get out on as many retailers as possible.
Steam isn't just a store front, its a content delivery system and DRM supplier. About 80% of the most popular games are tied to Steam. Regardless where you buy it, you are bound to Steam, all roads lead to Steam. Of course VALVe told publishers to sell in as many places as posible.

It doesn't matter that they didn't get their %30 for that game, because they now have a directly line to your gaming life and the vast majority of people will buy direct from Steam from then on.

Gabe is an ex-microsoft man. The mantra of "Windows on every PC in every house", was drummed into him. He found a way to make "Steam on every PC in every Gamer's House", and did so in such a way most people think it was an altruistic and benevolent.

Microsoft own Gears now, not Epic. :(

But Steam isn't pre-installed on every computer you buy.

Both Steam and Windows Store are crap, but WS is one of the shittiest thing in the history of PC gaming.

You are absolutely correct, just flip a switch in the Settings, and you can install UWP apps from anywhere, at your leisure. The nerdrage is apparently because they can't find that switch or they're retards. Well, could be both.

Valve is not enforcing Steamworks on anyone. It is lazy developers who do not offer different version. There is absolutely nothing stopping them from selling non-Steam version in other shops, however the developers chooses to sell Steam keys instead. To say Valve is setting up Steam to be a monopoly, you need to show this is dictated by Valve, not developers own choice.

And I bet you anything right now, that dOg's mantra is "Galaxy on every gamers PC"... Does not make other of them Monopolies, only popular.

So far what you have shown is popularity, not monopoly. There is not a single evidence here that show Valve setting up Steam as a monopoly, only as an very accessible and popular service. In fact so popular that publishers do not care to make other non-Steam versions of their games. But the difference is that this is not dictated by Valve , it so a publishers choice. Valve a actually advices publishers to not do so.....

So.inthe end, what do you want Valve to do? Sabotage Steamworks to make it buggy. and thereby forcing developers away? Stop selling games? Force developers to sell elsewhere?

No its not
But its required for 80% of PC games.

How appropriate for this to suddenly pop up, just a few weeks before the Alpha launch of Paragon.

Not that there's any point in replying (or discussing this - it's the sort of topic where battle lines are clearly drawn), but the first point there is the overall effect: Either all users will flip that switch right away and therefore there's no point in it being there and no supposed security benefit, or some won't even though they may have otherwise at some point wanted to install stuff from outside Windows Store, likely because they won't know or won't think of it. With many users being as they are, the latter seems likely, so people will be steered in a certain direction by their OS. And the primary purpose of an OS should be to readily run any software designed to run on it (on any hardware designed to function with it), and if possible as many others not actually designed for it as well, through compatibility functions.

But the bigger issue is the slippery slope. Or the frog boiling, as gooberking put it above. Started years ago and water's starting to get pretty hot already.

Tried to select parts in the first post to summarize, but let me try to cut it down further and emphasize what I see as the main points, which are actually about where this is going:

"Its new Universal Windows Platform (UWP) initiative, [...] [is] the first apparent step towards locking down the consumer PC ecosystem and monopolising app distribution and commerce.

[...]

It’s true that if you dig far enough into Microsoft’s settings-burying UI, you can find a way to install these apps by enabling “side-loading”. [...] Bigger-picture, this is a feature Microsoft can revoke at any time using Windows 10’s forced-update process. [Applies to anything, considering they already made changes and even uninstalled programs through updates without even notifying, much less asking, users.]

[...]

The ultimate danger here is that Microsoft continually improves UWP while neglecting and even degrading win32 [...]. Ultimately, the open win32 Windows experience could be relegated to Enterprise and Developer editions of Windows.

[...]

Gamers, developers, publishers simply cannot trust the PC UWP “platform” so long as Microsoft gives evasive, ambiguous and sneaky answers to questions about UWP’s future.

[...]

Their actions speak plainly enough: they are working to turn today’s open PC ecosystem into a closed, Microsoft-controlled distribution and commerce monopoly, over time, in a series of steps of which we’re seeing the very first."

Overall, the PC was and must remain the free (as in freedom) platform. And these are obvious steps towards changing that.

As for the entire Steam discussion, while I agree with the general idea of it and have been making many "peeps" about it as well over the years, it affects the overall picture to a lesser degree than the OS the vast majority of PCs use.

And this may be handy. I'd file the Steam discussion under #3.

Your right. They not forcing SteamWorks, but using it does tie the game to Steam.
Valve created a free tool for developers with the intention of getting content onto Steam. And they succeeded. About %80 of new content is exclusively bound to Steam.

Yes you can use Steam works without Steam, but its dependency is implied and the sample code from the API documentation suggests an fatal error if the client check fails.

Steam also give a simple (and maybe free) DRM solution. Which publishers like. If as a publisher you want DRM then your need to invest into another solution to not have a Steam version.

Valve, like microsoft, created a good product and got a controlling share of the market. I don't bemoan them that, however it is the effect on the market and VALVes absolute control I find disturbing.

Yes they are popular, you can be popular and not be a monopoly.

Monopoly is sufficient control over a market as to have an adverse controlling effect on that market. Which VALVE does. Whether they planned that 10 years ago, is debatable, but the simple fact is the vast majority of games are tied to Steam.

They have created an environment that ties consumers into a life long contracts (often not clearly stated at point of sale), gives them the power to overrule the publishers EULA and deny consumer rights. The last one is not solely their fault, the software industry as a whole abused the contractual nature of licensing (which the law has now clamped down on), however VALVe are fighting to keep games in a legal grey area.

What do I want valve to do? I don't want them to do anything, its the rest of the world need to stop seeing them as some kind of flawless beacon of PC gaming Utopia.

The problem is the 99% of people who won't do that, through lack of inertia or 'There are options?' levels of knowledge, and the possibility that through those people Windows Store becoming the defacto place to get all software. That's what happened with steam, and why it's so bloody hard to get games anywhere except steam these days, and it *could* happen with Windows Store. Sure, there will always be ways for more knowledgeable people to install stuff from other places, just like we can buy games from GOG now. But do we really want another steam-like situation where the shitty WS is the place where most stuff is sold because (just like steam now) there aren't enough customers who buy stuff from other places to make it worthwhile selling elsewhere? Not to mention the possibility that Microsoft could very easily close off the possibility of side-loading (once they've got the majority of market share, of course) "for our protection, from malware" for instance.

the problem is that UWP applications get new feature, while win32 application are not.
if UWP will, in the future, get directx 13, while win32 will be deprecated, and microsft decide that you have to use windows store to install applications developer will be forced to use UWP applications and will be forced to put UWP apps on windows store.
There is another problem, since UWP apps are sandbox you are not allowed to make some applications (for example you cannot make a VM apps, and I'm not sure Java applications will work on windows in the future).

this is the real problem.
I think Tim Sweeney is right.

For the record, on Mac OSX you need to use a slide to install applications outside the mac app store, but the desktop applications on mac (.app) are the same outside and inside the mac app store, there is not an API for app store, and an API for outside app store. And to develop an application for mac you just need a free developer account.
So, there is always a way to install .app outside the mac app store, and since there is only 1 API apps outside mac app store still get all new feature.

I will not talk about Linux because there is no need to talk about a system where there is no closed app store.

So what microsoft try to do is not good at all.

PS. read this:
https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsapps/en-US/220f7769-ac99-462a-832e-95a5a5229d13/need-help-publishing-java-application-in-windows-app-store?forum=wpdevelop

if win32 API will be deprecated, java applications will not work anymore.