I would agree, but that flow is through google play services not through the system itself, so google can just remove it whenever they want.

For me they did not work for a while but recently they updated their apps and now it works fully.

Well, yes I looked at tailscale too, but that would prevent me from using my normal commercial VPN, which I would still like to use. The way I understand it, if I routed my entire network through tailscale to my server, it would essentially make all my internet traffic exit at my server. So, everything would still appear to be coming from my home IP address. I’m trying to get the best of 2 worlds: using the VPN to hide my IP from services that i visit and my ISP, and a secure connection to my home server.

You could still use a virtual machine for those games and or functions that you still need. I mean a kernel vm.