One could argue that Apple Arcade is exactly that healthier ecosystem. Games with less bullshit and no in-app purchases.

It's a tiny garden in a dump of shit. Some titles probably can't make money from a revenue share of service that costs $6 a month.

Which is fine, because I don't need a thousand games. Honestly the only thing I wish Arcade offered is more games for the 5–10 year old crowd.

They've been actively fostering the enshitiffication of the App Store. Practises like preventing paid upgrades forces developers to use micro-transactions to survive. They also aggressively change and deprecate APIs without adequate notice or documentation. This means apps require constant maintenance. So one-time purchases are much less viable for developers.

Soon we'll be able to install whichever apps we like in the EU thanks to the DMA. I think there is a hunger for alternative app stores.

Not to mention the rise of the dreaded Subscription Model. That has to be the most miserable scam ever inflicted upon software users. I’m sure a lot of developers here will disagree and quote needing a constant stream of revenue, but the same is true of any business including a Mom&Pop corner shop—and yet they survive (or don’t) on the margin they make on the products they sell, not by selling a subscription card you need to possess in order to have the privilege of shopping at their store.