Speaking out on the 1UPYours podcast, Epic’s Mark Rein and Tim Sweeny have voiced their concerns about Microsoft’s upcoming Games for Windows Live service. If you’ve not heard about it before, Microsoft is planning a new online gaming service for PC users that is not only drawing on the benefits of the existing Xbox Live service but will also take the very unique step of enabling cross-platform Xbox 360 and Windows PC multiplayer gaming.

Sweeney makes valid complaints from a developer’s perspective: “The key problem with the service right now is that any feature that Microsoft implements and charges for, the developer can’t implement themselves. As a PC developer, we’re used to having complete freedom and defining our feature set – what we can give gamers and what they can do in our game. That’s a big change, quite a huge change, for PC developers to now have features that we simply can’t do.

However, the larger concern for Microsoft is going to be how gamers react to the service, which will charge them an annual fee in much the same as Xbox Live currently does. “Taking all of these things that everybody has come to expect for free and now yanking them back and trying to sell them isn’t going to fly with the Windows platform – not with Epic and not with the big publishers," said Sweeney.

There’s no doubt that the idea and the technology behind Xbox Live and Games for Windows Live are pretty exiting, but PC gamers have been enjoying free online gaming since the very first online multiplayer games, with the only exceptions being MMOs. It is worth noting, that part of the free Silver membership will allow for free PC-to-PC gaming, just like the good ol’ days, but the problem is that Microsoft will be forced to influence the design of PC and Xbox titles in order to sell more Gold memberships.

With developers already struggling with soaring development costs, I can’t help but feel that this leaves them with yet another hurdle to cross in an already expensive process. In the end, this could very well have a negative impact on the multiplayer components of these games or cause developers to shy away from the 'Games for Windows' branding.

via Next Generation

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