Bingo! VCV Rack is built for musicians, not software developers, many who do not know how to unzip a downloaded plugin. This is perfectly fine, because musician

Bingo! VCV Rack is built for musicians, not software developers, many who do not know how to unzip a downloaded plugin. This is perfectly fine, because musicians can do many things that I can't. So to make it possible to use for the masses, an account system is best, where it takes two buttons to add and install a plugin. The minority who don't like giving their email address in exchange for this generously-made software can still look at the manifest JSON files to get the binary download link, or compile it themselves.