Tim Sweeney Has Totally Lost Touch With Reality

Tim Sweeney should be a name familiar to most by now, he’s the founder of Epic Games and best known for his work on the Unreal Engine. That is however not the reason that he’s making headlines for the last year or so, it’s rather his public rants against Microsoft and Windows. Now he’s back with another ridiculous list of tweets and this time he’s attacking the newly announced Windows Cloud.

At this point, I should probably make it clear that this is my personal opinion on the subject and it might not reflect my coworkers nor eTeknix’ view on the matter.

So what’s Mr Sweeney up to this time you ask? Well, in its simplicity, he is claiming that Windows Cloud will steal your PC game library and ransom it back to you. He cites the fact that Windows Cloud will be upgradeable to a full version of Windows for a fee as the source for this ridiculous claim. Yes, that is partly true, but the only part of this that is the truth is that Windows Cloud will be upgradeable to a full version. And that’s a good thing and it is a feature that shows that Microsoft is past the time where they want to lock you down into a single choice.

Update: Windows Cloud will steal your Steam PC game library and ransom it back to you…for a price. Source: https://t.co/Wc8xihRaCo

— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) February 4, 2017

Next up, he claims that Microsoft will be ransoming Unreal Engine, Unity, Photoshop, 3D Studio, and Maya – which simply is utter bulls*** in itself. Anyone with half a brain can see that. On from that, he claims that you will have to pay for the privilege to use software that isn’t from Microsoft, which once again is nonsense and not in any way illegal as he also claims.

Want to buy software from someone other than Microsoft? They will make you pay for the privilege. Disgusting and ILLEGAL!

— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) February 4, 2017

If that wouldn’t already show how out of touch with reality this guy is, it goes on with the latest claim in which he calls Windows Cloud ransomware. Seriously? You got to be kidding me, Tim.

Windows Cloud is ransomware: It locks out Windows software you previously bought and makes you pay to unlock it by upgrading to Windows Pro.

— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) February 7, 2017

So, now that we got Sweeney’s point of view on the subject, let us take an objective look at the issues he thinks exist. Yes, Windows Cloud will come with some restrictions and yes, it will allow you to upgrade to the full version of Windows for an extra fee in much the same way that you can upgrade a normal home version to a pro version. But no one forces you to use Windows Cloud in the first place nor is there anyone forcing you to upgrade it. Instead, it’s an alternate choice to the normal Windows ecosystem, one that is based around Microsoft’s UWP. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It is in no way any different that Google’s Cloud system nor is it any different than Apple’s closed ecosystem. For some reason, no one bats an eye when those two companies do such things, but when Microsoft does something similar, everyone calls bloody murder.

Even more ridiculous is his comparison with Valve’s Steam platform which in my personal opinion is a cancer on the gaming community. The only difference between the Steam platform and let’s say the Windows store is that Steam has been around longer and has a larger user base. They also lock you down, they force you to use it and do so even if you purchase you games in retails shops on disks. If anyone is forcing you to use anything, it’s all the companies who have their games exclusive on that platform. Yes, I use Steam too – but because it was forced upon me to be able to play third party games purchased on retail disk which didn’t reveal that it was needed in the first place.