Microsoft has decided to share its game development kit. The company published it for free on GitHub, but with the condition that you can use it without a license only for studying.
As Microsoft explained, before working with the Game Developer Kit (GDK), only developers who received a special license were allowed. Now everyone can try to create a game.
Although GDK has tools for all platforms of the corporation, its free version allows you to create games only for PC. To develop projects for consoles, you still need to enter into an agreement with Microsoft. You will also need a license to publish games on any of the platforms.
Separately, Microsoft clarified that GDK is a binary file, not an open source product.
You can read more about GDK here.
Microsoft plans to continue to make development for the Xbox ecosystem more open. But the company did not explain what exactly it was going to do for this.
Recall that a month ago Microsoft announced Windows 11. During the presentation, she said that she was working on changing the policy of the Windows Store. Amazon Appstore will be built into it, and the operating system itself will receive native support for Android applications.