FWIW, QuickPic Pro ad-free is available by Cheetah Mobile the company who bought it. Also a modded fork of the last verion before it was bundled with ads is available from github.
Yea it probably is just that. Best thing to do is install a modded version of Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA) with Play Store integration. Check the MustardChef github repo. Then use Mantis GamePad Pro for controller support for unsupported titles. That’s what i use and have all the best apps and games the Store has to offer. Performance is good now that WSA has Vulkan support, but not perfect just yet for 3D intensive titles.
Strange that if it wasn’t for this post, I wouldn’t have known of the update. For some reason the update wasn’t pushed to me in the Google store, and it’s been many months since I’ve updated it. I had to manually search for the app and uninstall it then reinstall it.