The idea is for games to be launcher independent/compatible with many launchers. If I wanna play a game I got on gog I could use the official launcher, heroic, mini galaxy, or I could even use no launcher and just download the game installers directly
No clue if it's heroic exclusive but it's more than just affiliate linking. Heroic embeds the actual gog store page in the launcher and gets a percentage of anything you buy per their agreement with gog
A part of me does hope that they'll hold off and release riscv products instead (headset and deck). I know box64 can already translate to riscv and I remember reading that FEX was working on it (android is also getting riscv support so waydroid should too?). Given their focus on linux it has to be on their radar
A decentralized marketplace would honestly be pretty sick as long as they can figure out how to ensure people don't't get scammed