This kind of thing is certainly possible under Windows - you can basically patch any kernel API call, replace any COM object instantiation, install filter drivers that intercept any request to and from a device, replace userland DLLs with your own.

It's really scary what you can do, to the point that I often asked myself 'why allow this?' - seeing as hits on certain APIs took me to blackhat forums and articles about writing exploits.

Oh sure, but if I just need to troubleshoot why Minecraft-launcher (a first party app) won't launch ... it didn't give any output; it didn't even exist apparently, but only because MS were hiding it, had to crack out Process Explorer just to get something to troubleshoot on ... then it turns out the "turnkey" app from their first-party app store, loading the first-party app, on the same company's OS just failed with no indications to the user at all, not even a "this app crashed". Solution was to cut out as much of MS as possible ... it's just infuriating when it doesn't work, which seems to be all-the-time.

More power to Bazzite and Valve, the sooner games app run in other OS the better.