You're highlighting real concerns, but leaving the door wide open with zero friction isn't helping genuine indie devs either, on the contrary (as we can clearly experience here), it's actively burying them in most cases.
Right now, the "free for all" model creates a false sense of accessibility. Sure, anyone can upload a game for free, but when hundreds of automated or zero-effort submissions flood the store daily, genuine indie devs who poured months of effort into their project get exactly zero visibility. A platform where everything is visible simply means that nothing is visible.
Regarding the technical vs. content issue (like basic Ren'Py visual novels made with uncurated AI spam), that's precisely why a simple automated filter isn't enough, and why friction + clear guidelines would be necessary; in fact, I'd say almost imperative at this point, if we want to attempt to solve the issue in any way. If the platform defines clear quality standards regarding low-effort asset flips or unedited AI spam, bad actors won't risk $100 on something that takes them 5 minutes to generate.
As for the staff workload: the current team is overwhelmed precisely because checking infinite zero-cost submissions is unsustainable (and evidently understaffed for that purpose). Introducing a financial barrier would slash submission volume by 80–90% overnight, allowing staff to actually focus on a manageable number of legitimate requests rather than drowning in noise.
Doing nothing just because every solution has trade-offs isn't a strategy, it's letting the platform slowly turn into an unnavigable dump for users and devs alike. In fact, I'd argue we're already almost there.