Today in fuck Facebook news, Facebook will be adding an unlisted section to their Quest storefront, and is working with Sidequest to migrate its apps there.
...Okay, that’s probably a lot of gobbledygook for non VR people. Let me explain, as there is a lot to unpack here.
To begin, much like consoles, the Oculus Quest has a curated storefront, and apps need to be approved by Facebook. Sounds perfectly normal, but the Quest is Android based, so this curation presents a bit of a Paradox. Android is supposed to be an open platform where developers can sideload their applications on commercial hardware for testing or alternative storefronts, and Facebook wanted the former to make it easier to develop games for its stand alone VR devices, a market segment struggling to gain wider acceptance, but not necessarily the latter for all the same reasons any platform holder would.
To try and prevent non developers from just side loading whatever they wanted onto their VR platforms, Oculus removed the ability easily sideload applications from devices directly. Instead, you have to setup a developer account, put your device into developer mode so a permitted computer can read/write to it, and use command line tools to install your app. This added layer of complexity was sufficient for the Oculus Go, as it’s storefront was more open, so few people felt the need to jump through these hoops for home brew, leading to fewer home brew applications.
The jump to Quest’s curated approach resulted in a lot of devs with rejected applications, who eventually began to rally around a PC application called Sidequest. Sidequest is a PC application that both provide a GUI for installing APKs to your Oculus Go/Quest, as well as an alternative storefront for developers who where either rejected or didn’t want to work with Oculus/Facebook. Unlike the Go, the homebrew scene on the Quest exploded.
This unlisted section on the surface looks to be Facebook wanting to support this homebrew community. Facebook will host these homebrew apps, and better integrate them into the OS than sideloading allows even, but they won’t be accessible from the store. Instead developers will have to share links to their app. They are also coordinating with Sidequest to shift it to use this process in the future instead. Sounds good at first...
...But this would put the homebrew scene under Facebook’s terms of service. The homebrew scene includes paid applications outside of Facebook’s purview, emulators, ports of old PC games, and political satire, all things Facebook might decide it no longer wants to allow. (
Edit: Forgot abouts mods too. One of Sidequest biggest draws early on was Beat Saber modding.)
But Facebook would never do something underhanded like that, right? It’s not like it’s frequently made promises on how it was going to manage Oculus that it later broke...