The platform cratered with the dominance of pay to win games and the "freemium" model. This allowed the store to be cluttered with junk. I can't shop there, because I'm not sure what I am buying.
This loss of trust amongst consumers is what caused the original video games crash in the 80's. Nintendo's seal of quality is what restored consumer trust. Apple may need to get more aggressive about the App Store.
Well, they had a category (maybe still do) called "Pay once games" or something like that. Basically highlighting games that you paid for once, up front, like normal games, and that didn't have a bunch of IAP.
They also show on every single app whether or not it has IAP (and you can see what the IAP is with a tap), so you can do your own filtering when looking at the new games list if that's an important criteria.
But you often have to play the game for half an hour before you start running into really gross IAPs, though. If you want to find games that don't have those predatory game loops and IAPs, the only way seems to be to go outside of the app stores and find review sites - but no site can keep up with reviewing every game that gets released.
I dunno, if you look at the list of IAPs offered, and see that most are for "gems" or "coins" or something like that, you can be pretty sure that they've got something up their sleeve.
Usually the reviews on the app store itself are enough to tell if the IAP is particularly intrusive. I've skipped plenty of games after finding the reviews full of people complaining about it. Similarly, I've played some IAP games after app store reviews praised the game for making the IAP not intrusive (and the reviews were right).
Your opinion is valid, but there's plenty of people who thoroughly enjoy many of the games you've stereotyped as junk. I'm among them; some of them I find good reasons to pay for, and others I just enjoy the free experience. One man's junk is another man's treasure I guess. Stick to what you like; it's just for fun!
Pretty much this. They could have added better filters around things like "Cosmetic-only IAP" or "Ad Supported" or "No IAP whatsoever" but they did not.