Update: After reaching out to both Rainway and Microsoft we received a response back from the Rainway developers on the removal of the app.
Hello Robert,
I appreciate your interest. No further information is available. Thank you.
At this time we still have received no response from Microsoft. We'll continue to update this article as more comes to light.
The Rainway Xbox One App has been removed from the Microsoft Store as the request of Microsoft according to the app's developer.
"Thank you for your overwhelming response to Rainway on the Xbox One Beta," a tweet from the developer stated. "Unfortunately, due to unexpected circumstances, Microsoft has asked us to remove Rainway from the app store. We are continuing to work with Microsoft to bring Rainway back to the Xbox."
Just as the tweet states, the Microsoft Store page for the Rainway App now states that it is "currently not available."
The Rainway App had just entered beta on the Xbox One last Wednesday, giving PC and console gamers the opportunity to try out this streaming service on their Xbox One for the very first time. However, it was removed from the store around two days after its initial launch.
Why was the Rainway Xbox One App Removed?
The removal of the Rainway App on the Xbox One so soon after its launch into beta has raised many questions, the first and foremost of which is why it was removed in the first place. The public announcement didn't really specify a reason other than Microsoft asking them to remove it.
I had a look around gaming communities trying to find an answer, but I've largely only seen a whole bunch of speculation on the matter. Some have speculated that this may be due to the fact that Microsoft is coming out with their own game-streaming solution Project xCloud, but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense as that is largely a different service — for example, Project xCloud doesn't let you stream Steam games to your Xbox One.
I did find one single item of note in a Reddit discussion thread on /r/cloudygamer:
To add to the guesses I would conjecture that Microsoft straight out told them the app won't be welcome back in the future and they're just trying to not look like fools for getting slapped with this only after putting all the time into dev.
This comment was directly addressed by the developer of the Rainway app, who stated the following in the reply:
One, please don't call my development team fools for putting hard work into anything. Two, you're not correct.
Judging by this exchange, it seems like there's a possibility of the Rainway App returning to the Xbox One at some point in the future. We've reached out to both Rainway and Microsoft for more information and will update this article when we receive a reply.
What do you think of the Rainway Xbox One App being removed from the Microsoft Store? Why do you think the app was removed? Let us know in the comments below!
