It's hugely different at this point. For VR, the issue isn't piracy and profits. For VR, the issue is mindshare. If you're prioritizing lost profits due to piracy at this point, you're putting the cart before the horse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBaOpfSL2YQ
Steam is already a mature ecosystem in a mature medium, dealing with mature ecosystem problems. VR is definitely not there yet!
As a researcher (visual discomfort / simulator sickness), sometimes I just want to replicate an issue I am seeing in one application on another headset: controlling applications to only work on your HMD is a serious impediment to this and makes my work way harder than it needs be!
Curbing piracy is fine, but with heavier solutions like this, everyone loses in the end.
They aren't the only vendors with this problem--Meta, Epson, and other folks in the AR space have purposefully gimped their platforms (esp. BT-200) citing "piracy" as the reason to lock developers out of their hardware or software.
I'm keeping perspective just fine on this: the fact is that practices have shifted from open platforms to closed gardens to make development "easier" and, more importantly, to try and moved to walled gardens before there's really anything to even fucking plant.
>Curbing piracy is not their fucking job.
Of course it is. Oculus Home is a storefront. They sell games and piracy cuts into that business. It's no different than Steam using DRM.
>This kind of shitty heavy-handed behavior is what is slowing down AR and VR tremendously.
Maybe, but VR wouldn't be here in 2016 if Oculus hadn't kicked off the whole thing. They hired the talent, drummed up the interest, and set the best practices. But now we have three strong competitors (Oculus, Valve and Sony) releasing VR headsets. That's far better than the alternative.
I'm not trying to be an apologist here, but you need to keep perspective on this.