IMO, this is how people should download apps like VLC. Admittedly, I haven’t been following this whole story very closely, but from what I remember the rumor is that the downloads on videolan.org were hijacked by a hacking group with malware, warranting its ban from the Indian Government.
App stores and repositories such as those on Windows, Linux, and macOS are typically not susceptible to the same attacks as security is much tighter there, and updates usually have to go through some sort of approval process before being pushed to users.
Downloading software through its site/installer is archaic and just asking for problems like this. I think everyone should try to stick to the store provided by their OS as much as possible.