More likely it is the overhead of multiplatform support that motivates them to use Electron. Their support matrix is pretty big now: iOS, Android, Web, Mac, Windows, browser extensions, Chrome OS, and Linux
How did we ever managed without Electron?!?
Man we were 1337!
Apparently a forgotten art.
As for VMs, I am all for stuff like React Native, not for packing Chrome with each application.
Not only it shows laziness where Web == ChromeOS, bloats the applications and is yet another way for turning everyone into Chrome developers, bye bye Web.
I have rarely enjoyed using a Gtk or Qt app on macOS because they feel alien.
On windows for example there seems to be no rhyme or reason for widgets, mainly due to historical reasons.
Games don’t need to be consistent because they take up the whole screen and are immersive. Some very specific programs such as the Godot editor are a good example of a similar usage.
Which is basically the first line of my comment and how we used to do back in the day, with common logic and those in-house "engines".