After witnessing severe social media backlash and an outpouring of praise for Microsoft Paint, the company on Monday clarified that it will not drop the application, as it was announced earlier. The company said the app will be available on the Windows Store as an optional download.
“Today, we have seen an incredible outpouring of support and nostalgia around MS Paint,” Microsoft said in a blogpost late on Monday. “MS Paint is here to stay, it will just have a new home soon, in the Windows Store where it will available for free.”
The blogpost also said that the company had learned that its 32-year-old application had a lot of fans. “It has been amazing to see so much love for our trusty old app,” it said.
The company had introduced Paint 3D along with MS Paint in April this year which had 3D image-making tools and basic 2D image editing. In the blogpost, Microsoft tried to push Paint 3D, which will be part of the Windows 10 package.
“In addition to the new 3D capabilities, many of the MS Paint features people know and love like photo editing, line and curve tools, and 2D creation are in Paint 3D,” it said.
Microsoft Paint was first released in 1985. Initially it was a 1-bit monochrome licensed version of ZSoft’s PC Paintbrush. By the time Windows 98 was released, MS Paint could save in the JPEG format.
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