At its Build developer conference earlier this year, Microsoft announced that it planned to increase the roaming limits for apps purchased in its Windows Store. As the company announced today, that limit is going to be 81 (and yes, that’s Microsoft trying to be funny). Starting October 9, users will be able to install all Windows Store apps on this many devices – provided they are all associated with a single Microsoft account.
For all intents and purposes, that means users can install their apps on as many Windows machines as they want to. Even the most hard-core Windows geeks are unlikely to have 81 Windows 8 PCs in their houses, after all. Microsoft could have just gone ahead and told people there was no limit to the number of devices they could use an app on, but then it would have missed a chance to work the upcoming Windows 8.1 release into today’s announcement.
Microsoft says it made this decision based on the “growing feedback from many developers and from our most enthusiastic customers” who complained that the previous limit of five devices wasn’t enough. The company also argues that this change could bring more revenue to developers of ad-supported apps.
Developers will still have the option to limit the number of devices their apps will run on. Microsoft offers an API that will allow developers to build a service-side verification system to set those limits for their users.
Apple currently allows its users to install a single app on up to 10 devices.