Couldn't a lot of the Apple pain be avoided simply by ditching the Mac App Store? It's not a requirement for distributing software on the Mac, so why deal with

Couldn't a lot of the Apple pain be avoided simply by ditching the Mac App Store? It's not a requirement for distributing software on the Mac, so why deal with the pain, the limitations, the 30% cut, the slow approvals, if you don't really have to? The Windows Installer is distributed as an MSI, there's no reason the WireGuard installer for Mac couldn't just be distributed as a self-hosted .pkg. Cisco doesn't host their VPN packages on the MAS either.