If anything it's an example that games can be amazing on macOS, if developers take the time to learn and use the system. WoW on macOS is a far superior experience to WoW on Windows.
Apple literally published a 200 page guide on arm64 which I linked above, they've contributed low level optimizations and tunings to NumPy, Embree and Blender to name a few projects.
They clearly are helping. Perhaps you've not noticed?
Honestly no reason the majority of this wouldn't apply to "non Apple" arm64. It's sort of like being worried about AMD x86 vs Intel x86. It mostly doesn't matter, except in some cases where it does, but you don't set out to say "I don't want to learn Intel x86, only AMD x86"
You learn arm64, then you can worry about if you need to deal with implementation specific ISA quirks.
> For me the biggest problem is Apple deciding what/whose apps ios (and macos, given the recent code signing requirements coming with mac silicon...) users are permitted to use.
Thats FUD. The release notes even address it "This new behavior doesn’t change the long-established policy that our users and developers can run arbitrary code on their Macs, and is designed to simplify the execution policies on Apple silicon Mac computers and enable the system to better detect code modifications."
Many of those games are flagged as not working or not 64, but they are. Stardew Valley for example says it won’t work in Catalina, yet click run and it loads fine.
You don’t have to keep paying $100/year. Once a thing is notarized, it’s notarized. Also, anyone can submit any software to notarization, it’s not proof of ownership or identity.
This is not a new list in Catalina, you can see this same list on 10.9,10.10,10.11,10.12, 10.13 and 10.14. A quick check confirms the checksums between the 10.13 and version shown here have not changed.
macOS x86 games + macOS arm64 games == same number of games. Whats the loss angle here?