Nonsense.
The market changed. The industry changed the market not someone else. Major software houses and hardware manufacturers changed the rules and allowed freelancers to enter the market without needing $200,000+ or $500,000+ just to get a chance.
About scams and thieves and fake games… the problem there is about the justice system that doesn’t work worldwide, those are criminal actions and the law should be enforced. Raising the entry fee won’t affect scam agencies and thieves that have plenty of money by stealing anyway, it would just limit very small software houses and single freelancers trying to sell their products to make some money and grow. Although a $250 to $500 per game fee could have been better anyway to block those thinking that publishing games is not trying to estabilish a business but just wasting money selling very bad products assembled with no effort. On the Android Play Store there are many bad apps that even don’t work correctly at all, way more than on iOS due to lack of some proper manual review…and there are even people complaining that the App Store annual fee would be too expensive, and that is beyond silly.