Sideloading has become an important part of the Quest ecosystem. Many developers are using it to let users play games under development. It is also a way to install mods.

Currently users are required to sign up as developers and then enable developer mode in order for sideloading to work. Thousands of fake developers have signed up just to be able to sideload.

I think that Oculus should offer an alternative channel to support in-development work and mods.

One option would be to embrace sideloading in its current form, but without having to register as a developer. Like 'developer mode', add 'enable sideloading', and once that's enabled, the Quest would allow what currently requires dev mode.

One benefit would be that Oculus could clearly list the terms of sideloading when enabling this toggle. Users using dev mode for sideloading can't be expected to read all the dev ToS, but if the toggle itself provides the ToS, users will have less of an excuse for not knowing them.

This would also allow Oculus to provide different services for dev mode and sideloading. For example, profiling might be supported in dev mode but not sideload mode. Oculus would also be better able to differentiate between devs and users sideloading, which would give Oculus a better understanding of its users.

Another option would be for Oculus to provide its own method for devs to supply pre-release apps and mods. This way Oculus would have better control, better stats of what users are doing, and users would benefit by having an official channel to get software in development which doesn't require a PC. This could still all be behind a toggle and ToS.