A vr headset can't possibly be compared with a keyboard lol. There's things you can do with it without any software, people have been pluging it to computers to see what was what since launch and it does get recognized as a display, a very non standard one that needs further work before being usefull. That's what Sony's software will do, if you don't like it feel free to wait and/or contribute towards open source efforts to do the same, but this is not different than any other device
I'm not the one who made the comparison, I'm just the guy replying to it. If you don't like TechLurker's comparison take it up with him.
It's a compatibility layer so of course it will be required to use the device.
That's an assumption you are making for Sony. There are plenty of VR headsets that don't require a middle-man software running 24/7 in order to use them. The Vive Pro, Vive, Valve Index, ect. Maybe it needs that software in order to work correctly on the PC or maybe it's just there because Sony wants to force people to get PSN accounts or to collect data.
Unless you were on the development team, you are blindly guessing here.
When you're not using it you can disable whatever services it instals, just like you need to disable the services for every other peripheral.
Think about that for a second. You are going to have to disable the service EVERY time you stop playing VR and enable the service EVERY time you want to play VR. I know this because I had to do just that when I had an Oculus headset. That coupled with it randomly stealing focus is why I got rid of it. That was before meta started requiring accounts, thank god I got out of there before that. So much effort when one can get a Valve Index and not have to waste so much time stopping Sony's or Meta's BS.
It's mostly the big brand names that add services with their mice and keyboard. To say it applies to every perhperial is grossly misleading. It doesn't apply to any of the mice and keyboards using a web interface (which is increasing due to popularity). It also doesn't apply to any custom keyboard that I'm aware of and I have yet to see any of the smaller brands install a service either. I've had iGK64s and Ducky's and Pokers and their software is only for configuration, no service. Obviously my 60HE doesn't require any install at all.
Contrary to what you may think, keyboard apps though not required to use the keyboard also install crap services that you need to manually disable/delete.
The only people installing the software for their keyboards are those with 75% or smaller KBs and those with hall effect switches. There's zero reason to do so for any other keyboard as full sized and TKL don't really need key remapping and there's no hall switch configuration to mess with. Most big vendor's keyboard software is horrid to boot, couldn't even remap the Fn key on my Black widow mini so I got rid of it. Litteraly every other board from smaller brands could do that.
Pretty much everything tries to get their own background service installed if they can because sadly we live in the worst version of the timeline.
No, the reason services as part of keyboard installs is even a thing is because customers blindly buy brand names, not quality. Most people don't realize that in fact outside of the big names there are tons of higher quality keyboards that are better than the trash they are being shoveled and the services they justify because "everyone else is doing it!". The upside is that the Wooting 60HE seems to have gotten people to realize they can have an amazing keyboard without that stuff.
Except they are comparable, especially depending on what one pays for. Not all keyboards or mice have onboard memory (esp. some of the cheap Chinese stuff available) and require an active app to handle enhanced functionality.
I haven't purchase a single mouse since 2001 that hasn't had onboard memory. You can buy Red-dragon mice off Amazon for $16 that have onboard memory. I'm not sure which mice you are referring to but it certainly does not represent what the vast majority of PC gamers are using.
Going further out to other peripherals, same applies for other devices such as stream decks, fancy RGB control software, gamepads, and even some fan control software.
The steam deck isn't a peripheral and I definitely shouldn't have to point that out.
It's a system in and of itself which is mutally exclusive with the concept of a peripheral
Neither are RGB fans or fan controllers.
t'd be nice if all of those could just conveniently never need an app again aside from initial installation and setup, but it doesn't play out that way, and at best, one would hope that the app has a decency to let the user disable telemetry, or looking into disable certain reporting services. Razer Chroma and Corsair iCUE are known to be crappy resource hogs and phone home unless the telemetry is disabled, but people still install them anyway since they're practically required to run all the extra bells and whistles on their Razer or Corsair peripherals (and at one point, was mandatory to run one of the older Razer gamepads).
You can 100% get gamepads without that nonsense, I've got a drawer full of 4 cheap Xbox knockoff controllers without that issue and 2 higher quality xbox one controllers. The vast majority of controllers do not install a service. I didn't even know such a thing existed but then again I don't spend extra money to get ripped off Corsair and then inconvienced to boot. The moral of the story is avoid brands that do things you dislike and going off the beaten path often pays off.
I never said that it doesn't matter, but at the same time, it's just as stupid to stress out over whether another gaming megacorp has your data or not, directly or indirectly, ESPECIALLY when you're already in said ecosystem like myself, who has been online with Sony since the PS2 days.
I personally have never been on any of the console networks, social media, ect.
That said it's never a bad time to stop giving them your data. Data's value is weighed heavily based on the date it was collected. Just because they have your data up till now doesn't mean there isn't value in stopping.
There's also something to be said of the quantity of data collected. Allowing them to collect data from you everywhere just because they are collecting data from you someplaces completely ignores the fact that this isn't a all or nothing situation. Reducing or stopping data collection from one or more sources has a big impact on their ability to build a profile on you and the ability of others to purchase that data and subsequently build a profile. Each data collection avenue closed is a postive step.
As well, I don't get the bad reactions only targeting Sony when Blizzard and Ubisoft are also just as guilty of pushing having accounts with them to play their games too, even if it's on Steam; in fact, having done it longer than Sony. Heck, they used to just create your account for you, using the same data taken from Steam itself and users never realized they had a newly made account until they started receiving updates to their Steam email sent not by Steam, but by the gaming companies directly.
No one liked / likes having to sign into another account to play their steams games. The games that did that and still do that are widely panned for doing so and rightfully so.
Unfortunately, everyone wants to have their walled garden, whether it's Sony, Apple, Nintendo, Steam, Epic Games, etc, and the US just enables it. Unless one has the financial wealth to pay a data-scrubbing company to keep as much details off the web as possible, or can bully a company to actually take your data off when one puts in a data deletion request, that person is SoL unless they live in the EU, where they have the best digital privacy laws to date. Beyond observing best privacy practices and using privacy-oriented options, there isn't much the average person in the US could do to better defend their privacy without paying so much. You preach about resisting and fighting back, but US privacy laws still suck, and for all that privacy advocates have done, it's still years before we'll see enough change to force big tech to back off. That's not me being defeatist, that's me being realistic.
Steam isn't a wallet garden. Developers can generate keys that they can sell on other platforms with 0% of those sales going to steam. There's a reason there are so many key sites selling steam keys. If steam was a walled garden you wouldn't have the competitive key marketplace that exists on PC.
A lot of those EU laws are influencing US companies. There have been more and more companies offering data deletion requests and a ton of website ask for cookie permissions when visiting them. Of the website's I've worked with, cookie permissions and data deletion requests are handled the same regardless of what country you are from. It would be far more work to do things differently depending on a customer's country.
It might be years before anything is passed in the US but I see positive changes being made slowly over time. Best privacy practices are good though regardless of what the laws are.