Someone downthread says the macOS signing requirements still go away fully when Gatekeeper is disabled, which is a simple terminal command. As long as that's the case, I don't think there's a real problem here.
It's hard to quantify "moving in a direction", but Gatekeeper was introduced nearly a decade ago and has always been possible to disable via a quick Terminal command. Apple did remove it from the UI in Sierra, so perhaps you could say that's a sign of things to come, but I honestly doubt it.
