I am legit excited about the idea of having VR eye contact, and would gladly pilot headsets for my team. But nobody wants to be on Facebook's platform. It's embarrassing to even talk about it. And I'm frustrated that something that should be a fun, cool, liberating, wide open new platform is so stifled and locked down.
It’s far less locked down than an iPhone.
When did that happen? Last I checked, sideloading was a potentially bannable offense (as in effectively bricking your device and losing you your Facebook account).
For a more managed option, there’s SideQuest:
Also Meta itself offers AppLab which is a less strictly curated app store.
Meta desperately wants you to write apps for the Quest platform. Nobody is getting banned. (You don’t need a FB account anymore either.)
Even if they have now changed their opinion on what can be done a large amount of damage is done. No-one will actively monitor that have their changed their terms. I was also under the impression that it's FB account and do the tiniest mistake and you lose it all. Thankfully it's just FB account so unlike with Google no real damage will be done.
Even if the things are better now I kinda have moved on, like many others.
The "grey area" is modding games(notably Beat Saber), since it involves replacing the APK with an altered one without the consent of the developer. And if the developer sells DLC, that cuts into their profit and maybe they'll threaten to sue Facebook for damages since they created the development tools and authorized development accounts that allow people to do it.