Can report that ALVR with a Quest 2 works great.
rivalary
I remember the physical media PC game days. At the end, the games had horrible copy protection/DRM. I remember not having an internet connection for a while and I went to buy a game that I could play. All the games on the shelf had a notice on the box that said "internet connection required". Single player games needed to be activated, and if you ran out of activations you either had to contact the company to reset it or you were shit outta luck. I far prefer the combination of Steam and GoG.
Publishers already tried this (EA, Ubisoft, etc) and it didn't really work. They came back to Steam.
The only issue with that is their prices go up if their costs go up. Kind of like how grocery stores claim that theft causes prices to go up. It is their money, though it does feel bad paying them.
"in a world where search doesn't exist, one man, one labrinth of folders he must click through."
Oooh, pirates!
Right now Valve could disappear and gaming on Linux would continue, better for the efforts Valve have already made. I would think that the improvements would stagnate without Valve, though.
Non-Steam utilities like Lutris, Bottles and Heroic run games nearly as well as Steam. We'd carry on.
Apple does it too. Not that it's any excuse.
I'm the complete opposite. I don't want to feel like the game is letting me win. I want to earn it, at least a little.
They would still pretend. And, though it would solve a lot of problems, it would remove purpose for so many people.
That's true, but those days are long behind us. Now, games are released in an unfinished state and require, at the very least, a day-one patch for any hope of a non-buggy experience. It's sad affairs everywhere in all aspects of the industry.