(Lack of near field is related to the lack of physical distance units in OpenAL, according to the author in the two issues related to this feature. Games have always used whatever they wanted to use; if OpenAL-soft, a plug-and-play replacement library, added near-field, you might get Zombie ASMR breathing down your neck in L4D2 or something similarly unexpected. The same reason was given for not doing headtracking.)