The things done to make a game sell and get a profit are not always the same things done to make it a "good game". Sure, it would be nice to have it all, but the amateur writer is working alone or close to it and the industry writer is on a schedule and needs to make something that will compete. Do you want a tight, unified vision or great production values? In practice, it's rare to have both. Do you want well-designed and production values and fully tested? You are going to have to wait on that and pay a premium for it. Or you are buying from the rare organization that can manage egos enough to let a talented designer drive vision while others help meet it. Never mind all the outside, societal influences.
First, testing is something that both sides need. It's also difficult, and done fully, expensive. So if you are buying from an amateur, there's only so much you can expect. I'm fairly forgiving of things that would have been difficult to find without extensive, blind testing. I'm not forgiving of things that would have been easily found by the designer actually trying to use the rules at their own tables. Especially since at least part of the time, the "reason" for such rules surviving into the published product is that the writer didn't use the rule as written. I don't mean sort of used it. I mean fudged it entirely or never got around to testing that subsystem. If you don't use it at the table, why the hell is it in the product!
Also, very few organizations have the guts to delay but keep the blind play test, even assuming that they were planning on doing one in the first place. There's no point in doing a blind play test, or even a semi-blind one, when the game has obvious holes evident in less stringent testing. That's not to say that the blind play test should be skipped, only that my criticism for many products would be "you weren't even ready for the blind test," instead of "you didn't do the blind test."
Second, what a lot of people want is not a "well designed game". They want a setting that is, for them, evocative, and any old mechanics that they can semi-ignore to use with it. So if the designer's purpose is a well designed game, then with budget and time, there's a good chance that the setting is going to suffer by comparison. Or maybe the setting is evocative, but only for a narrow audience that buys the designers vision. Given that some things that sell apparently well are well-produced fan fiction, barely even relatable to the word "game" at all, there's apparently an audience for that kind of thing.
Third, at the risk of invoking ivory tower theorists, there is something to the simulation versus non-simulation critique. I say "non-simulation" because that means game play, excitement, handling time, elegance, and everything else that breaks down in theory when the theorist try to put simulation in one category of many instead of sim versus non-sim. Anyway, among other things, a game is a model. There's always a line where the model can cross so firmly into sim territory that the rest of the game will suffer. Maybe not much, maybe even a good trade, but the trade is inevitable. The subset of the audience that really wants simulation pushed hard is rarely concerned with "well-designed". When they are, they are usually highly frustrated at not finding the mythical unicorn.
As for lists of 100 things, those are very much depend on what is on the list and the particular user. Every GM has strong and weak points. Sometimes, a particular list is pure gold. Often, it has a negative value--the GM's brain can supply a useful and better answer faster than consulting the list. I personally find that the most useful lists are one of two types. Either the list is highly focused on invoking the flavor of a particular setting to the point that it is almost useless out of it, or the list is a compilation from multiple contributors. The former belongs in a wider setting product. The latter needs an editor with a light touch.