Well, ok, maybe that's an extreme take. Short of that, certainly, developers would possibly pay some kind of annual fee to gain publishing access to the store? Maybe a setup like this could work? Wait, (puts finger to ear) I'm getting some new information, it turns out... they already do this?
Yes, as changes like this roll out in more countries, inevitably, their ability to collect commissions will get "weird". Its their own damn fault! Apple and Google were the ones who picked a rotten, cursed way to collect revenue. They'll need to figure it out; its their lunch.
How long has apt, snap, npm, whatever, ran with zero revenue? Epic and Microsoft run stores at, what, 12%? Don't start with me about how "they're incumbents, they have to price lower"; yeah, they're pricing nearer to cost instead of using their monopoly market power to justify arbitrarily higher prices! Application distribution is not that hard. Its not that expensive. Its a fucking GET request on an object that can be easily CDN'd, with some light versioning on top; just think about how many package managers Linux has, then tell me Apple needs to make a billion bucks a year to justify keeping the ten people who maintain it around. Its a value-addition to the OS and for your users who paid $1400 for a new phone; not a line of business. Anyone who says differently is trying to sell you something (and Apple is definitely trying to sell you something).