We see another side effect of app stores: gives governments easy leverage to tell you what you can do with your computer.
App Stores were always a mistake. Walled gardens were always a mistake. The people arguing that they were good because of security or whatever were arguing on behalf of a red herring. It's security theater. iOS has had, what, like 6 critical vulnerabilities in the past 5 years? What was the point? Quite literally only to limit what you can and can't run on your own device.
For all it's worth, I'm thrilled the Microsoft Store is dying a painful death and that most Windows apps continue to be installable via NSIS or MSIs.
What if WeChat was a traditional installer (.msi, .app, .exe, .run) that you download from some sever and which is mirrored all over the place?
Does the same authority apply? Can the government say "it's illegal to have this binary executable?"
Or is this only possible because there's one central repository for these platforms, and the government can simply compel the platform (legal and ethical questions aside) to remove them?
From what I understand, China does the same. Ban the easy things, only bother to crackdown on the harder things (like VPN or cryptocurrency) when they start to get out of control.