It's really copied from Apple's anti-consumer measures, which seem to be targeting free software. (Not just free as in speech, but also free as in beer.)

A developer might not care whether or not a fun project earns them anything, but Apple and Google want their cut, so if they make distributing software through their store expensive and time consuming, the free stuff will fall by the wayside, so the only options for a simple tool are either ad-laden or have recurring expenses.

Also, I used to think that getting an FPGA IDE up and running was the most painful, unreliable, and bloated development environment possible, then I met Android Studio.