Microsoft’s relationship with UWP has been estranged, at best, in the past couple of years. From moving the goalposts to what defines a UWP to saying the platform isn’t dead, one thing is clear, the future of UWP doesn’t look all that bright.

And the news is only going further downhill, as Microsoft has quietly announced that they will be turning off ad monetization for UWP. Posted in a thread for Windows Apps, a moderator announced that as of June 1^st, 2020, Microsoft Ad Monetization platform for Windows UWP apps will be shut down.

This will have a significant impact for any developer who was depending on this revenue stream for their operations. Further, this will severely limit how developers can make money in the Microsoft store and is now a significant reason to not build apps using this development model.

The writing has been on the wall though, Microsoft has been moving away from UWP as the future for Windows development and its stores have had minimal success, at best. But those most impacted by this will be the developers who took a bet on the platform early and have continued to support it up until this announcement.

Going forward, there is very little incentive for independent developers to bring their applications to the Microsoft store. Unless Microsoft opens up the door to using third-party services and provides them as integrated, native services, this will be the death blow to finally sink the already flooded UWP battleship.

Tagged with Microsoft, Store, UWP