Google and Apple only really got one try at creating an app store, so they took a punt at what they thought was a workable design and what they thought were sen

Google and Apple only really got one try at creating an app store, so they took a punt at what they thought was a workable design and what they thought were sensible commercial decisions at the time. They decided to commoditise their complement - why muck about with business partnerships and curation to produce a hundred $50-$70 games and lock out homebrew developers, when opening the floodgates lets you give your customers a wider selection and lower prices? Hell, they probably imagined market forces or something would allow quality mobile games to sell for $50 via the app store, and that they were doing small developers a favour by not locking them out of the platform. I doubt they knew, at the time, that they were going to be buried in micropayment casino mechanics and free-to-play, pay-to-win dross. Is the outcome crap? Yes, 100%. But I can see how back in 2008 when Steam was in its infancy, PC game piracy was rampant, consoles locked out homebrew games and every PC software producer needed had to roll their own sales/payments/distribution/updates infrastructure if they wanted to get paid, they thought the design improved on the status quo.