Inspired by the discussion during the Strike Vector EX quick look

Everyone is pretty bullish on Steam, being the de facto platform for PC games for over a decade now, but other publishers have their own platforms, and Windows itself has an app store that Microsoft is pushing more and more. I think that if anyone is going to successfully challenge Steam, it will be Microsoft, especially since they're somewhat neutral (eg, you're not going to see Assassins Creed on Origin).

Given that, what are people's thoughts on the subject? Would people be okay with more games coming out in the Windows store, instead of Steam? If it came out in both, would people pick one or the other? What would it take for people to buy from the Windows Store instead of Steam, if a game were available on both?

I think that my answer is that given a choice, I'd pick Steam over Windows, just because most of my other games are on Steam. However, I wouldn't be adverse to picking something up in the Windows Store if that was the only place. I'm not sure what would make me prefer Windows, though. Price is not a major factor for me, and I don't really care about any of the ancillary features of either platform (streaming, friends lists, etc)...

Whenever I think of microsoft store I think of how much I hated games for windows live. I stopped playing GTA4 as much on pc because I could not be F'ed with it. It was another useless process that had to run in the backround when I loaded up GTA4 in steam. Why? Uplay as well. Open steam, then, what am I going to play, open another useless program. Just another password. Just another possible problem for you. All so they can collect their greedy information.

If they tie it to your microsoft account when you fire up windows and it works online or offline seamlessly like oh I don't know, Steam, well then that seems ok. Just make it invisible and not a resource hog.

People always defend steam and hate all the others but Origin works fine for me. I buy more on steam because the prices are usually better and they have a lot more. But Origin works fine and the cloud save seems to work for all games at least the ones I've played, not just for some games that support steam cloud. Uplay seems to be ok too but I just have a few AC games from punching in keys from disc based games.

UWP is fundamentally broken and win32 apps (ie basically every game released for Windows before this Win 10 Store arrived and 99% of the ones now) are the way forward for PC gaming, same as always.

Windows is an OS where my local administrator can happily delve into the core OS files and poke about (as it should because the PC is mine and the system is mine to administer). Fix things, tweak things, make changes that I choose. Gaming is great on PC because the same is true there. I poke around, modders poke around, the driver team behind my GPU poke around - everyone can have a poke if I choose to activate their tweaks.

Not so with UWP apps, which are locked up with default permissions that don't even let the local administrator see the files. No tweaking stuff, no injecting a custom DirectX dll to tweak the 3D effects to work better or enable new shaders. Not even direct access to the GPU so the game can properly access the video output beyond your desktop output settings or drivers having proper access to the game so all the overlays and so on work right. Of course, the MS overlays are all working fine, those have been granted access and enabled for all UWP apps. Just the devs who made the game and the devs who made the drivers for my GPU who have to be restrained from doing what they want to!

But why does it matter, isn't UWP going to continue to improve and get better with time so it'll be just as good as win32 eventually? I have to wonder why are we so eager to wait and why MS, after throwing away Games for Windows (Live) and the store we'd previously used to buy things, even bothered to come back? Remember when all those publishers had to release patches removing the GfW matchmaking, DLC, and savegame encryption from their titles so they could keep selling them on a store that wasn't being turned off? How everything moved to using Steam APIs.

Anyway, here's why accessing the files on my PC was important earlier today (yes a timely example): I needed to move some stuff around my SSDs (because I only have a few old small drives) including a UWP game:

This is why I need to be able to access the files for the game. This is where Steam, where I can copy a folder and the acf metadata file and it just works is the right answer to the problem. I don't need a special app to move files around (that's a generic task for which I should be able to use any file manager I like). A special storage system that, as shown here, doesn't work (and kept not working - in the end I deleted it and will have to download it all again if I want it back on a different drive).

I am happy with competition. Competition is good and right now I've got Origin, uPlay (free copy of The Crew coming next week as part of their 30th anniversary celebration), GOG Galaxy, itch, Oculus store, Epic launcher, and Steam installed (plus WinStore that comes preinstalled). Technically the GeForce Experience might be a store (or will be one, think it only does free codes for now but they've got a store for their Shield Android ports). But all but one of those is selling me the same win32 games I've been buying for years and (whatever specific DRM they may contain) give me access to their files to poke at as I see fit.

MS have built a bad store to replace the last PC games store that they took down so haphazardly that everyone who used it had to fix that mess to keep selling the games tied to it. But far worse, they've build a new API/platform to build games on that's so locked down it's less accessible to the purchaser/local administrator than the core OS files are. It's no good, it doesn't work right, and the sooner it goes the better. Luckily, things like Quantum Break (coming to Steam) are making it pretty clear that even MS realise no one is buying what they're trying to sell.

@shivoa: Not to go against your argument or anything, but you definitely do have access to that stuff. Just click the button, and boom, you've overwritten the default permissions. That said, I don't doubt that it would stop working if you changed anything.

That also said, I doubt most people care either. The only game I care about poking around in is Skyrim, and that is a use case they design for. I bet most publishers would prefer you don't poke around, on Steam or otherwise.

I'm with you. Now that we know Quantum Break is going to be on Steam, I'm going there but I have no problem using the Windows Store for Killer Instinct, Forza Apex and the upcoming stuff.

There will be no competition to Steam, only companies that don't want to give 30% of their sales to Valve.

In that specific example I would choose Steam, because given Microsoft's history I don't expect them to stick around long-term. I find myself moving more towards GoG or Origin these days though.
I've been getting more bitter towards Steam's customer policies.

A game has to be pretty special to make me boot up the windows store.

I've had Windows 10 for about a month now. Because of this thread, this is the first time I've even looked at The Windows Store...

Windows store sucks, origin is ok, uplay sucks, and steam is pretty good.

I find myself not buying games not on steam anymore, not because i hate everything else but because i dont get reminders when i open steam. If overwatch was on steam id probably own it, but since its not i forgot about it and lost all my buyers impulse.

I used to use GOG before they started to enforce regional pricing. (same with steam) They're kind of all the same to me now.

Ye, changing file ownership (especially under Windows) is an easy path to breaking things. And it gives me no confidence (when their tools are broken without messing with that) that anything would work when poking around. The fact that MS have explicitly said no to editing files (mods) for now implies that they don't expect anything to work at all - they may well be using checksums etc to DRM the packages to prevent any tampering by the person who owns the game/PC.

I think the popularity of modding is impossible to deny. Dota 2, CounterStrike. So mods and tweaking of stuff being a pipeline to some of the biggest games is core to the industry, is core to most developers (who can tell you which game they first modded before becoming a professional). Also it's really big. Skyrim is huge, including on PC. Skyrim mods are also huge. SkyUI has almost 4 million (registered) downloaders on Nexus, 13 million total downloads, 30 million page views. And those 4 million registered users is the low end, because SkyUI doesn't require you to register to download it. There are almost a million users currently subscribed to it via the Steam Workshop who may not have been counted by Nexus.

Millions care about modding. We all should care that, if we buy something, we should own it; we should be able to poke at the thing we purchased as that copy is now ours.

It is funny though that the best 'direct' console ports in terms of performance are on the Windows Store with UWP. Forza, Killer Instinct (after they fixed the refreshrate nonsense) and Halo Forge run really well. Probably not because of the store , but still interesting (UWP actually being good for this maybe?). The store itself is kinda crap and not really focused on gaming. The lack of choosing your own installation map is dumb and games still have limited support in terms of overlays and such.

I've no problem with Origin, Uplay and the like. Steam is of course more complete in terms of games and the workshop, but the other ones do fine as a launcher.

I would have no problem with the Windows Store if it means easier access to Xbox One games.

You talk about Microsoft neutrality with different game publishers being a reason they could offer a similar lineup to Steam.

What about Sony and PlayStation? I imagine at some point we'll see a PlayStation desktop app similar or Origin or the Steam Mobile app that lets you access their store, buy games and chat with friends. Then you can remotely download the game to your PlayStation console or if it's already installed you can stream the game to your desktop.

That would always be a secondary way to play but I can imagine it being an option. Or something that hooks into PS Now. Some desktop visibility.

There is nothing that UWP offers that you can't do without it (it only blocks access to stuff you might want). So those games could run just as well without UWP. The fact they're ports designed purely for a 1.23 TFLOPS GPU is likely where they get their perf: even if you buy a $100 RX 460 then you're throwing 1.95 TF at the game (using a similar core design so those numbers are comparable). If you've spend $100 a year ago then you'd have a R7 360: 1.62 TF. It's hard to build a PC that can't just brute-force over what the XB1 is capable of. And an XB1 exclusive has already been programmed to work with DX12 so is reasonable optimised for the Windows port. But that's not a feature of UWP.

They run well because there's not that much complexity there and they originally targeted a system that it's hard to find less of on PC without buying a machine designed to not play games at all. Multi-platform stuff is harder to manage. Not to say porting is trivial but those games are very much best case. They're also not (technically) doing all that much and you can see it in the final image. You'd expect them to run well, just as you'd expect Tomb Raider (2013 reboot) to run well - something that doesn't come forward when that engine becomes more complex with Rise of the Tomb Raider.

Doom was a good port this year that did plenty with the rendering and was so far away from anything MS that it didn't even used DirectX (let alone going in via the UWP hooks/API).

After visiting the windows store recently to buy ReCore and browsing around I gotta say I liked a lot of how it's structured. The way the system requirements get crosschecked with your actual system in real time is a real neat "oh yah, obviously!" kind of thing. Buying things also takes like two button presses. I haven't used it a whole lot so it's hard to judge - maybe there are plenty of annoyances I simply haven't ran into yet.

I think Steam is really due for a complete overhaul that simply won't happen. Some things are simple, others seem really janky and weird. I didn't really have a problem with neither Origin nor Uplay really so maybe I have real low standards for what a program meant to play games needs to be. I bought games through both and the act of getting and playing them was pretty hassle free. Uplay was a little more bothersome from what I remember but Origin was completely hands off. Ironically I think GoG of them all thus far seemed the worst simply because it's so completely basic. For the first year or something you couldn't even search for friends - you could only add people to your friends list from discussion threads which seemed nuts for a game launcher in 2014.

I don't mind using Origin or the Windows 10/Microsoft/Xbox store, but Steam is obviously preferable. I will say that the graphics options in the latest Win10 games (Forza 6: Apex and Halo 5: Forge) have been impressive, providing some console-specific performance options which I haven't seen before in PC games.

@shivoa: Well maybe UWP makes things easier for developers to port their Xbox One exclusives without massive performance hits. They can do it themselfs, but that doesn't always go well, even if it should be easier now on paper because both consoles are now based on x86 architecture. 'Bad' ports still exist (No Man's Sky for example) and not every game is DOOM is terms of optimization for all platforms (DOOM is extremely good on a technical level).

That's not what I said. Those games are designed for modding. Those mods (other than SKSE) don't involve changing the executable, which is what we're talking about here.

I'm not super familiar with Windows Store apps themselves, but I do iOS development, and on that platform, apps are signed cryptographically to prevent modification. However, if an app were designed to support mods, then that would be fine, so long as the mod didn't involve changing the executable itself. Eg, putting a ".mod" in a folder or something.

This is done for two reasons: To prevent piracy, and to increase security. The latter reason is also why Program Files is locked down on Windows (and why you also shouldn't fuck around with permissions there either).

@pkmnfrk: Program Files are not locked down. They are secured against non-administrator modification but the local administrator has full access. This is completely different to the UWP system of making those files non-visible to local administrators. SweetFX (which I mentioned earlier and was a very popular mod for Skyrim, especially early on) is a dll injection: this is exactly the sort of deep modification that isn't a mod that is authorised but rather a change that the user can enforce as they own the files and own the machine: they control what is executed. Mods have a long history of this, that some developers embraced this does not mean we can hand over rights to mod files to only the ones they approve of. This history of modding is the history of user poking at file structures, working out how things are arranged, and editing them.

The iOS system is also a completely walled garden designed so Apple can force 30% of all sales for stuff they didn't make to go into their profits column. Comparing it to Windows shows where MS may wish to go but which will destroy the open system which is incredibly popular and has survived for decades. This is why the push against UWP has been so vocal: it's a terrible land-grab to try and turn Windows into something it isn't and something where the innovation we've seen in the previous decades is impossible.

The issue with everything that is not Steam is that they feel unnecessary because Steam is so good, widely used and accepted. Having to manage multiple friends list is annoying I think.

I don't like the Windows Store because I have to disable my firewall every time I want to download from it even though I have it set to allow all traffic from the store.

@shivoa: If you're the local administrator, it doesn't matter what the permissions are, you have the ability to gain access. If not, then you don't. In that regard, Program Files is no different from UWP.

@pkmnfrk: Above you agreed that changing file ownership is likely to break stuff and yet now you don't see the difference between files that are local-admin accessible (but are secured from non-admin modifications for security reasons as part of the OS security model) and ones that aren't without forcing a change in permissions (ie likely to be broken by doing so, forcing the ownership change from the existing permissions).

I mean, there is a very good reason why industry luminaries have been up in arms about UWP and it isn't they and I just don't understand what's going on. The problem is we understand exactly what is going on and see a risk to our futures as developers who can make stuff and then sell it directly and build ecosystems that make the entire industry go round. We can innovate and there is no central cog that demands control, stealing ownership from users and blocking developers from having direct relationships. When even nVidia and AMD are being blocked from providing systems for the GPUs they sell (via enforced sandboxing) that are in the existing drivers, something has gone horribly wrong for your new API that you claim is good for gaming and games development.

UWP is just a toolset that devs can choose if it makes their lives easier (e.g. very easy Windows 10 / Xbox One porting). There's nothing forcing anyone to use it (apart from, presumably, Microsoft's internal teams), and I can't see it becoming anywhere near "the norm" given how dominant Steam is. Sure, some teams will choose to use it (either instead of, or alongside, a Win32 release), mobile-ports will probably use it go get on the Windows Store, but I think you'll find that the vast majority of games continue to to be released as non-UWP for a long, long time.

I haven't run a single UWP game yet on my Windows 10 machine, and it feels like the amount of vitriol being flung at UWP is totally out of proportion to the impact it's actually having.

To answer the OP, I'd much rather just keep using Steam.

I think people's snobbery on Steam is a bit annoying. Origin is just fine for example and they have outstanding customer service, much better than Steam to my experience. I had an issue activating a product from another retailer on Origin for example and they just quickly gave me everything through Origin proper within just minutes of starting my customer service issue. They also give you whole week long trials of games. They're great.

Trust me, I enjoy Steam and use it a lot but competition is good. And Steam has some crap policies. Their offline mode stuff is terrible now and I just had to deal with it when my internet went down for a few days and I though "hey, at least I have Blood and Wine DLC for Witcher III to keep me occupied" and Steam wouldn't let me play my game I purchased offline because I didn't go into "offline mode" WHILE I WAS ONLINE WHICH IS A REQUIREMENT. So stupid. Also the Steam store is organized like complete shit. They have a lot of games to deal with but that's not an excuse I am buying since it's been the case and they don't do anything to fix it aside from really their awful curator program. Plus the shitshow of Steam reviews.

As far as the Windows store, I have not even used it yet but I'm going to get Forza Horizon 3 for sure so after that we will see how I feel.

I honestly don't give a damn. If I want a game, I'll buy it where I can get it.

The snobbish attitude about not wanting to buy something from a specific place is stupid.

I think Microsoft is approaching windows gaming all wrong.

They should look at where Valve STEAM is weak
- Poor organization or games, with Alpha builds mixed with completed games all being sold for teh same price
- Tons of junk made by crooks, there are SO MANY crooked developers out there selling junk.
- Curation is non-existent...it all Wild-West with the user being at the most risk.
- It too teeth pulling and laws in consumer friendly parts of teh world to get refunds...ist still and open joke that Valve gives 'No F__cks' about consumers being happey or feeling well treated

Second they should be running a PC game store, not a "Win 10 Appreciation" operation as a front
- Stop knee-capping PC games with required mods that take out visual fidelity controls and custom mods
- Stop scheming weird connections between PC games and XBox One games that seem to improve NEITHER.
- Stop looking for short term gains instead of planning for a PC games storefront that will be around in 10 years.
- Stop acting so sleazy and underhanded in how you talk to users - give a good deal, have a nice curated store, and be the place people WANT to go.

The windows store is... Not great. And I have a huge established library on Steam, which as a platform/storefront has extremely rarely given me any issues. Most of which were back when it was new. It's not exactly a hard choice honestly. I've pretty much only used the Win10 store to play Killer Instinct.

I use Steam, Origin, and Windows store for games and they all work fine outside of some minor ease of use issues with the Windows store(mostly because its still a developing platform). I would love to have ALL of my games on the same platform but thats never going to happen. At the end of the day at least I dont have a million binders full of install discs and scraps of paper with cd keys on them.

I am nearing 40 years old and its gotten so easy and streamlined to play games on PC compared to years back. The future got here. It got here but people were too busy complaining to notice.

Steam may not be perfect (far from it), but it would be pretty hard to get away from it after purchasing so many games and using it for so long. I haven't yet seen any good reason to get anything from the Windows store.

The thing that has pulled me away from steam the most is GOG. If I'm ever given the choice I will always buy from there first. Their launcher is the worst of them all (hopefully it will improve eventually), but the fact that everything is DRM free is simply awesome and makes me want to throw my money at them. <3 CD Projekt

I definitely prefer steam over its competitors. Steam is easier to organize, it's faster and it has the biggest selection.

GOG is a close second because it's also fast and organized, and much better for older games, but I definitely prefer Steam for new games.

Origin is okay. I have enough games there now that I feel my inventory is a little difficult to organize. It's also not quite as fast as steam, but I'll play games there.

Uplay... It's an okay launcher for my Ubisoft games, but I definitely don't use it for anything else.

Windows Store. The extent of my interaction with it is accidentally clicking the icon on the task bar. It seems a little slow and not very dedicated to games, though I'm a little curious about Forza Horizon 3.

I don't care.

Make all the stores you want, you're all the same to me.

Whoever has the best prices and policies will get my money. I've got games on all the consoles and all the PC platforms, so keep em coming. Origin, GOG and Steam all have their pluses and minuses. Can't say much about the Windows store as I've only used it once.

QFT

I was considering the Windows Store for a bit today because I was thinking of getting Recore. Then I saw that you needed windows 10 for the game and immediately went "nope". I don't have anything against the OS but I'm not upgrading just to get access to the "Xbox Play Anywhere" games.

There was a while when I switched from Steam to GOG because of the promise of DRM-free games, the price not being too bad and old games being made to work with modern pcs (in theory anyway)... Then Steam added refunds and I went back to the Steam store in an instant. Their GOG game launcher never ended up being that useful for me. I usually ended up adding my GOG games to Steam.

Uplay/Origin have become storage places from the free games I've obtained over the years. Both of those stores' languages default to French for me which is annoying (my country is bilingual, one of the languages being French). The sales were never that great and I wasn't THAT interested in most of their games.

Recently Uplay added 2 Factor Authentication for their client. Since I never linked anything to that account, nor am I getting anything sent to the email adress I use for that account, I guess I'm locked out of it forever?

I have bought a couple of games on Itch.io which are solely from a couple of very small fry indie developers.

I also have a couple of games on the Humble Bundle store because of the Humble Bundle purchases but most of those are activated on Steam anyway.

Big Fish Games. I bought a couple of point & click games there. There is always a sale going on there, not entirely sure if that's legal.

There were a couple of stores I considered using but never ended up doing so. One of them is Playism, which is mostly a collection of Japanese indie games but all the good ones usually come to steam anyway. Fire Flower Games is a small store for DRM-Free games like GOG. The game selection nor the sales were ever great. The last one is DLsite which can be used to purchase... hentai games. Most of them look like crap. I wanted to buy this game called Castle of Succubus on there, a Castlevania clone but it wasn't available in English at that time so I never bothered.

I'd like to see the Play Anywhere stuff broken out into its own store/launcher

The Windows store is already too busy, and it's never going to have the light stat tracking that Steam has. Putting all of that stuff in one place makes the most sense to me.

Steam: I like it because it's where everything and everyone is. They could stand to make certain features easier to find but in general, it's my preferred platform for PC games.

Origin: It's fine, I just don't give a shit about anything EA publishes so I rarely use it.

GOG: It's good but frankly outside of their whole DRM free stance I don't have much reason to use them.

Uplay: I've never used uplay but from what I've heard it's not really that bad, just kind of a bothersome and pointless task to play games you bought on Steam. (I don't think I've ever heard of anyone who downloaded uplay with the intention of actually using its store)

Windows Store: I haven't really used. The layout sucks and UWP has some issues that still need to be worked out but at least it's kind of being improved over time. I'm going to have to deal with it when I buy Forza Horizon 3 and Gears 4. (I don't see those ever being brought over to Steam)

The good thing about steam is that it's convenient that most of my games are there and sometimes the guides are useful. Their store is a God damned nightmare though. It's horrible.

Origin is alright, have never had issues. I tend to play most EA games on consoles anyways.

Haven't used GOG much so no real opinion on that

Ubisoft is pointless. It has no reason to exist other than to be a pain't in the ass.

Haven't played anything from the Windows store but I'm not a fan of having all their phone games integrated with pc and xbox games in one place.

@shivoa: I know that this thread is almost two years old, but I came across this thread while searching Google, and I want to partially counter your perspective with mine. I'm not a developer, I'm just a PC user, but here me out. I get your argument that the Windows ecosystem has flourished because of its openness, but there's one thing that I don't think you've admitted so far in this thread: sandboxed applications are fundamentally more secure than non-sandboxed applications, and because Android and iOS were designed to sandbox apps, those operating systems are more secure than Windows.

I own a Windows 10 PC (a 2017 Surface Pro), an Xbox One S, and a Windows phone. I still own that Windows phone but I don't use it anymore because I bought an iPhone.

When it comes to apps and games on Windows, whenever an app or game that I want is available from the Microsoft Store (formerly called the Windows Store on Windows PCs), I get it from the Microsoft Store. Why? Several reasons.

- Generally speaking, Store apps are more secure than Win32 apps, because they are sandboxed, and there is a permissions system in place that helps to prevent Store apps from getting access to things that they shouldn't have access to. Further, users can read the list of permissions required on the app's Store page. Some apps in the Store are Project Centennial apps that still use Win32 and so their permissions list in the Store includes the phrase "all system resources" which means that the app requires full system access just like non-Store Win32 apps, Microsoft has taken some steps to sandbox these, so even this is still better than installing applications from outside the Store. When you install applications from outside of the Store on Windows 10, a User Account Control prompt asks you something like 'do you want to allow this application to make changes to your system'? I don't know what an application installer is able to do, but to me, that UAC prompt is basically asking me if I want to allow the application whose installer I've opened to be able to run wild and do whatever it wants on my system. That scares me, and that is why I like sandboxing and permissions. It's even worse when you try to run an installer that hasn't been digitally signed, in which case UAC asks you something like 'do you want this application from an unknown developer to make changes your system'. I HAVE to install applications I obtained from outside of the Store because they weren't available from the Store, and so I HAVE to install applications and grant them the ability to 'make changes to my device', and trust that they won't do anything harmful. But I HAVE NOT installed anything that wasn't digitally signed, and I doubt I ever will, unless I either set up a virtual machine for that stuff, or learn of a way to install those applications into containers.

- When applications and games have direct access to users' hardware, that is a security vulnerability. I could be wrong about that, because I'm just a user and not a professional, but that is the impression that I've gotten. I think that it is safer to have applications be sandboxed and not able to interact directly with users' hardware. I understand that this prevents whatever benefits applications might get from interfacing directly with hardware, such as being directly accelerated by a GPU (as far as I know). Maybe this downside of sandboxing can be ameliorated through APIs that Microsoft would develop in collaboration with ATI, Nvidia, and other hardware companies.

- In your comments in this thread, you've argued that the PC has flourished over the past several decades because of Windows' openness (technically not open-source, but you know what I mean). I'd argue that we've been running software in an INCREDIBLY insecure manner this whole time. It's been like the wild west. That might have been okay before the Internet, but it's very risky now that our devices are interconnected.

Now, some points that aren't related to security:

- I like the Universal Windows Platform because if an app is UWP and supports PC and Xbox One, I can download that same app onto BOTH of those devices, and if the app requires purchase, I only have to buy it ONCE, and with that SINGLE purchase I can run it on BOTH devices!

- At some point in your comments, you might have said that UWP apps can only be obtained from the Microsoft Store. If you didn't say that, then Tim Sweeney said it in one of his posts that you linked to. Regardless, I read that Microsoft now allows UWP apps to be distributed outside of the Store. See https://www.howtogeek.com/219651/windows-10-allows-you-to-sideload-universal-apps-just-like-android-does/ . I'd be curious to know if any of the games that are available as UWP from the Microsoft Store are ALSO UWP when obtained from Steam. For example, it was announced recently that some Microsoft first-party games that I suppose were only available from the Microsoft Store until now are coming to Steam and will also be released on optical disc; I wonder if these games will be UWP even when obtained from Steam or installed from optical discs. But I do know this: Microsoft has said in the past that users who want to buy a game once and run it on BOTH their PC AND on their Xbox One will need to buy it from the Microsoft Store. (Think about it. You can't run a PC optical disc in an Xbox, and you can't run an Xbox disc in a PC. And the Xbox's operating system is closed like iOS, so you can't download a Steam client onto it and run games purchased from Steam. Therefore, if you want to buy a game once and run it on both PC and Xbox One, you HAVE to buy it from the Microsoft Store.)

Here's my updated experience with the Windows/Microsoft Store, i didn't want to make a new thread just for this minor update so i found this one instead.
Of course MS games going forward will be available on Steam which is great, because i'm currently trying to download Forza 7 and it has stopped due to an "error" 5 times, almost every time i open up the store to check on the download it has stopped for an undisclosed amount of time, and is unable to retry the download without my prompting it.
I only own a few games on the MS Store, but i've had this and other issues for every single one of them, to the point where it was faster to obtain Gears 4 and Forza Horizon's 3 and 4 through other methods as the store downloads kept failing.
I once had an MS engineer remote access my computer to attempt to resolve the issue and fail to do so, which is when i gave up and resorted to the other methods, i cannot believe these issues still exist 4 years after Windows 10 launched. These issues have persisted across 3 different PC's.
I remember Jason having the most issues with the MS Store among the crew, i just wanted to give an update years later to say it's still bad.
My download just errored again.

@cikame: I too have had download errors with the MS store and I pretty much have come to the point where I avoid it like the plague.

The most annoying thing besides download problems I've ever experienced has got to be with Forza Horizon 4. Every single time there was an update it would completely reset all of my video options and controls, and everything else that I had setup in the settings menus. I had some pretty specific settings as well so it took me about 10 - 15 mins to remember and set everything back up the way I had it before the update. Great fun that was! I very much wish I would have waited before buying Recore and Killer Instinct on it as well. Really wish Forza Horizon 3 and 4 would go to Steam.

@casepb: @cikame: I have the exact same experience. I own a few games on the Windows store and still to this day I've never been able to play two of them due to downloading issues. The windows game pass thing sounds like a pretty good deal but unfortunately if I can't play games from the windows store as it stands I'd be a fool to attempt to buy anything on there going forward.

This is just one of my gripes with the windows store I also get bizarre login issues pop up once in a while where after having logging in using multiple credentials it then thinks I needs a windows service to log in via biometrics... on a desktop PC with no bio reader. The log in issues are easy to fix but the download issues persist.

At this point I wish Gears 4 would just appear on any other launcher.

I don't mind any platform. Steam obviously has the most features, but adding another launcher / game installed in another launcher as a non-Steam game is a breeze.

UWP definitely confuses things, but as a software developer, I think it's for the better. There's no reason some shovelware from any platform should be able to delete my Documents folder.

Minor update, my download has stopped multiple times since i posted 10 hours ago and i've still got 19GB to go........
Unless i'm on top of restarting the download this will probably take me another 2 days.

If it is any consolation: I also had MS Store issues for years. Around the time Game Pass went from "okay?" to "I really want that" I used that as an excuse to buy an even bigger SSD and reformat my desktop.

If you're willing to back crap up and spend a half hour or so then reformatting Windows 10 did wonders for fixing that storefront.