Indie game developer echoes Valve’s Gabe Newell on Windows 8: “No thank you, Microsoft”

An independent video game developer has added to concerns raised by Valve’s Gabe Newell about Windows 8 being a “catastrophe”.

Chris Delay, Creative Director of Introversion Software and Designer of Uplink, Defcon, Darwinia and Multiwinia, said on a Reddit thread:

“If Microsoft manage to close Windows and get to the point where every app has to be approved and certified by them, it’s game over for a lot of indies including Introversion.”

It follows remarks by Gabe Newell, CEO of Valve and former Microsoft employee at a conference in Seattle last month, where he said Windows 8 was “a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space.”

The concerns appear to be about how much control Microsoft wants to have over purchases of games and applications in its next full operating system.

According to the BBC, Mr Newell said: “There’s a strong temptation to close the platform…because they look at what they can accomplish when they limit the competitors’ access to the platform, and they say, ‘That’s really exciting.'”

Rob Pardo, Executive Vice President of Game Design at Blizzard Entertainment later tweeted that Windows 8 was “not awesome for Blizzard either”.

Meanwhile Mr Delay, posting on Reddit today with other indie developers as part of a Q&A tie-in with The Humble Bundle for Android 3, said he was also unimpressed with the interface of Windows 8.

“I’m skipping Windows 8 until Microsoft include an option to use the Windows 7 start menu and reduce the metro interface to a program, ala control panel,” he said.

“It’s like someone at Microsoft took their upcoming tablet interface designed for 7 inch touch sensitive devices, and insisted we’d want the same thing on our 24 inch monitors with mice and keyboards. No thank you Microsoft.”