More Developers Show Worry Over Microsoft’s Direction With Windows 8

It seems the concern or outright hate of Microsoft’s newest operating system Windows 8 is continuing to spread. More developers are voicing their concerns over the direction the Redmond giant is heading, with only a few showing what could be considered cautious optimism. As we have already reported, Gabe Newell showed great disdain for the new OS, calling it a “catastrophe” with Blizzard executive Rob Pardo describing it as “not awesome for Blizzard either.” But it doesn’t stop there, Markus Persson the creator of Minecraft has also said it could be “very, very bad” for indie developers. Finally at Quakecon this year, John Carmack while not disdainful of Windows 8 has said it brings nothing new to the table and that he is content to continue using Windows 7.

The list of disgruntled developers continues to grow ever larger, Brad Wardell of Stardock commenting saying Gabe Newell is “totally right,” and that “Hopefully the market will be able to adapt to the wrongheaded strategy Microsoft is employing with Windows 8.” Dean “Rocket” Hall, the man behind the wildly successful Arma 2 mod DayZ, has said “there is some legitimate concern there, particularly for complex games that the PC market has a real hedge on.” He concluded a long conversation with gamesindustry.biz with “Overall, it feels too early to say for most of us I think. It’s definitely a concern, there are some worrying statements that make you wonder whether the intention is to try and emulate what their competitors are doing, or drive their own space through innovation. My preference is always for the latter.”

Meanwhile, Hugh Jeremy of Unknown Worlds has yet to really form an opinion, citing that he needs more details to properly judge Windows 8 but that he is still hoping for an open platform. That said, he did have a very interesting story to share, “For a small developer, a relatively open platform is an enormous benefit. That benefit is the ability to produce, distribute, patch and support content without engaging with the platform provider. Look at what happened to Fez on the Xbox 360. Walled gardens like the App Store, consoles, and now Windows Store can eliminate or damage that benefit, and that is not good for us.” For those wondering, Fez developer Polytron in order to patch their game and fix a save corruption bug would have had to pay Microsoft $40,000 to do so which led to the developer being unable to fix the problem because of financial reasons, it simply didn’t make sense. Had the game been on Steam it would have been no problem with a fix in place within two weeks of the game’s launch.

Then of course there is Introversion’s lead designer Chris Delay, who’s view of Microsoft and Windows 8 is about as far from sunshine and rainbows as you can get. “I really hate the general concept of ‘closing down’ Windows, and this seems to be where Microsoft are intending to go,” he further elaborated, saying “Nothing scares me more than the thought that one day, all Windows apps may have to be certified by Microsoft before they can be released and installed on users computers. That just fills me with dread because I’ve been on the receiving end of Microsoft’s certification process for Darwinia+ (Xbox Live Arcade).” He didn’t stop there, he continued on mentioning his various thoughts and fears in terms of Microsoft’s direction, saying “What scares me about Microsoft is how the requirements will grow over time – they won’t be able to resist eventually requiring Xbox controller support, then Xbox Live Arcade avatar integration, then tablet touch input, then Kinect support, and before you know it we’ll be coding Bing search boxes into our game menus. The list of requirements for Xbox Live Arcade virtually doubled in size during Darwinia+’s development, and ended up including items about the Rock Band drum kit and guitar and stuff like that.”

It seems overall many developers are fearful of Microsoft’s direction with Windows 8 and that their past experiences with Xbox Live and Microsoft in general has left them with a lack of trust in the software giant. Hopefully Microsoft will wake up and see the damage their forceful approach is having on potential business partners and developers before it’s too late. More in depth coverage can be found at the source below.