Meta already owns an app store. They introduced their own payments channel, then they cancelled it

They want to own a successful app store.

Back in the day ~2010, Facebook was the app store. Farmville et al were more popular than the top games on mobile at the time. They really should have pushed for a mobile version of it, as the lack of that is what killed it.

I fondly remember those days. It feels like such a missed opportunity.

Imagine Craiglist / Facebook Marketplace taking 30%.

it's likely dumber than that: bait and switch. Facebook had done this before: they gave third parties rich access to their data via Graph API, which in turn helped Facebook to grow.

Once their social graph growth phase began to slow down, Facebook severely cut off data access.

I have an Oculus Quest 1. How are they going to update it to stop supporting sideloading when they've stopped supporting it officially altogether?

They don't have to. If this market pans out for them:

1. Almost every VR device is not yet sold. It doesn't matter what you can do with existing devices because they are a tiny fraction of the market.

2. Devices are going to improve drastically. No one is going to be using a VR device from today except as a retro computing device anyways.

Well, that's an interesting way of framing it.

Yeah it’s wrong. They locked it down because it was a regulatory and reputational disaster.

I will never believe Meta or Apple excuses for our computers not being computers. Video Game Consoles are about complete control to create a fake digital market and it needs to end.

Normal people don't know how to side load.

The 5% that actually care are power users, these are the folks who buy every iteration, develop for the device, etc.

I'm not a power-user though. I use a 3-generation-old Oculus Quest 1 that doesn't get first-party official updates anymore. Am I really supposed to expect Meta to push an update to a depreciated platform to disable a feature?

?

I agree with you, I actually use Android since I prefer to be able to install what I want.

They can close that door any time they want, all they have to do is add a paywall for a developer account.

You don't need a developer account to sideload on the Quest.

Unless something has changed, you need a Meta account and must enable developer mode, which requires signing up as a developer in order to sideload.

e: Checked and confirmed, though they call it Debug Mode now. Still need to sign up as a developer.

you are reading too much into Meta. They arent the NSA

True, the NSA needs a FISC warrant to conduct mass surveillance.