This has been a long time coming.

Basically they cut out the middleman and spy directly on you via the OS.

Luckily there are tools to cut out most of that ****.

Also it seems like they are trying pretty hard to get an "app-store"-kind of thing on windows. They are seeing how Apple and Google make Billions of dollars with those and thought they want to do that, too.

There are rumors of microsoft abandoning win32 altogether and moving to uwp, which would kill steam on windows and allow the windows store to take over.

The paranoia is real.

Yeah I don't see that uwp project being more successful than their last attempts in that direction like "games for windows live".
Microsoft doesn't stand a chance to take over steam. Steam isn't exactly made by a weak little company that can't defend itself.

It's not like there isn't any precedent or reason.

Windows 10 has numerous data-gathering functions that have nothing to do with successfully running an OS.

Windows also has it's own store on Xbox and can plainly see what Google and Apple can do with their own-platform stores. it's hugely successful. Why not try the same for Win10? It's not like they can't. And Steam itself proves that it both can AND that it works.

It remains to be seen whether they will, but it's not like they can't, and it's not like they have no reason to do this.

Even with a Windows game store... Steam would obviously not be killed. It just means they'd have another "competitor" it's like fearing EA will beat out steam with origin- hosting 1st party games solely on it. Same with Uplay.

Instead they end up throwing most of their games on steam and requiring we download their drm to play- they can't get customers otherwise! Which is pretty funny if you think about it.

I also very much hope Windows doesn't become 100% metro-style apps. It's great for mobile and consoles but really clunky on a PC.

Please no more metro apps.....

for me as well.

windows 10 is not free. not it's pro version. which sports a tad less telemetry. which is why you should get that and not upgrade.

telemetry makes microsoft buttons of money off your back so technically the price of windows went up not down.

as it turns out my disabletelemetry.txt is not enough.

(and Win10 tweak tool is even less still)

only a separate server between it and the router will be able to firewall the rest of telemetry.

disabletelemetry.txt attached for those who are interested


paste it in an admin cmd. it's more than a start toward getting rid of telemetry completely. if you're running on windows 7 or 8 or 8.1 you should do this regardless since it shipped as a License Agreement-less automatic and mandatory update

cheers!

I've given up on Windows. I had been running Windows 10 on VMs and a new desktop that came with Windows 10 Pro and Win7 Pro. I'm tired of all the extra patching and monitoring their monitoring of me. I'll keep my Win7 systems for a few years, but I'm moving over to Linux. The new desktop is now a hackintosh. I'll never be able to trust Microsoft again.

Am I the only one who's mind is being absolutely blow away by this?

No, thanks a lot for posting this, it was really interesting to me.