>I've never understood why there's so much rage about crappy games on steam.
It's because there are so many crappy games on Steam that it makes it all but impossible for indie developers with decent games to be discovered. The perception that Steam is a cesspool of con-artists and incompetents depresses the perceived value of any game on the platform not released by a known publisher, meaning any independent game is more likely to fail merely by being associated with Steam to begin with. Also because the last time the video game market was drowning in mediocrity, it crashed.
I mean... when I was in high school I used to doodle Mario levels on my schoolbook jackets because I was just that kind of nerd, and now I live in the glorious future of Unity and Godot and Game Maker and C++ and SDL2 if I want to be a masochist. It's fantastic that anyone can more or less make something that can at least theoretically be called a "game." But that doesn't mean all of it deserves to be on the open market.
>If we want to go back to publishers controlling access, who in their right mind would approve Schenzen IO?
You're right, if it were up to publishers no one would be making anything but MOBAs and first person shooters and maybe Candy Crush clones. Independent game development allows niche and non-profitable genres to thrive. However, again, it's still a problem that the sheer bulk of garbage on these platforms makes it difficult to find that good content without some kind of gatekeeping.