Tim Sweeney was once known for his role in co-founding Epic Games. Epic Games, as we all know, created some of the world's most recognized titles in franchises such as Unreal Tournament and Gears of War. They have also created one of the world's most widely used game engines, Unreal Engine. These days, Sweeney is more keen on throwing out a bunch of outlandish claims against the Windows 10 operating system and against Microsoft.

About a year ago, Sweeney first started his attacks on Windows 10 by saying that it was a walled garden for everybody but Microsoft. He felt that 10's UWP access would lead to the removal of Win32 apps entirely. Win32 apps being those programs that you've used for literally decades now. They're pretty much every program in Windows that isn't a UWP app.

Less than half a year later he gave an interview with Edge Magazine in which he said that Microsoft would gradually update Windows 10 in order to break Steam over the next five years.

They... are? Oh, okay. Moving on then.

This past week, Sweeney once again stepped up onto his soapbox to say that Windows 10, specifically Windows Cloud, is going to steal your Steam PC game library and then ransom it back to you. Oh, that's terrible. We should do something about that! You know, assuming it were at all true. Sweeney points to this Neowin article that talks about a version of Windows 10 called Windows 10 Cloud.

The linked article says literally nothing to back up Sweeney's claims. Where he's getting the ideas that he's getting is anybody's guess right now. Windows 10 Cloud is a version of Windows that is rather heavily stripped down. It's akin to Windows RT, for those of you who remember that failed OS, but it does offer at least one key advantage. If you want, you can pay a bit of money to upgrade from Windows 10 Cloud to a full version of Windows.

Sweeney has naturally latched onto this and twisted it to mean that Microsoft is totally going to hold your Steam library hostage. The thing is, Windows 10 Cloud may end up being completely free but with those various options to upgrade to a full version if the user desires. You know, kind of like how shareware used to work way back in the day. Hell, Sweeney himself should be all too familiar with shareware. You get to try a feature stripped version and if you like it, you pay to get the full version with all the bells and whistles. There's nothing malicious about that in the slightest and is actually a great way for consumers to try before they buy. Even if they don't buy, this sounds like a fantastic idea for those who aren't quite computer literate, such as the elderly, or for those people that have no need for anything more than what is available via UWP applications.

Sweeney called this Windows 10 Cloud idea "illegal."

He claims that users will only be able to get apps from Microsoft, even if recent builds still allow users to sideload UWP apps or buy them elsewhere. Also keep in mind that Windows 10 Cloud hasn't even been officially announced yet.

Not yet content with his baseless rants earlier this week, Sweeney continued the tirade today with a couple of choice tweets.

His calling Windows 10 "ransomware" is par for the course with his other incredibly hyperbolic and outright incorrect remarks about the operating system and Microsoft. Sweeney is making it out like one day we're all going to upgrade Windows 10 and find that we're suddenly running Windows 10 Cloud and have lost access to everything we once had on our machines. No, that's not how that works. That's not how any of that works. Windows 10 Cloud will be (if it is actually released to the public) an entry point for those who are not running Windows 10 in any fashion.

With any luck others won't try to add to the fear mongering via statements crafted not from facts but from their personal feelings.