Suddenly any person with Microsoft WORD and a PDF writer could suddenly release a module or a supplement and they did.
That's not a bad thing. That's how the industry started, except with mimeographs. Let's face it, the first editions of games in the 1970s were amateurish. Rules were scattered randomly across the text and contradicted each-other, hugely obvious and necessary things were missing from the rules, the illustrations were crap, and so on. This is true of OD&D, RQ, Traveller, and a stack of other games from the 1970s... and later. It's even more true of the other games we've forgotten. From 1971 (Chainmail) to 1979 inclusive, John Kim lists 45 different rpgs (I'm just counting 1st editions, with D&D Basic/AD&D being a borderline call). Most of us will know at most 5 of them.
1971 Chainmail
1973 Dungeons and Dragons
1975 Tunnels and Trolls
1975 En Garde
1975 Empire of the Petal Throne
1975 Boot Hill
1975 The Complete Warlock
1976 Uuhraah!
1976 Bunnies and Burrows
1976 Starfaring
1976 Metamorphosis Alpha: Fantastic Role-Playing Game
1976 Monsters! Monsters!
1976 Knights of the Round Table
1977 Bifrost
1977 Chivalry and Sorcery
1977 Traveller
1977 The Fantasy Trip
1977 Superhero 2044
1977 Flash Gordon and the Warriors of Mongo
1977 Space Quest
1977 Star Patrol
1978 Adventures in Fantasy
1978 Dungeons and Dragons, Advanced
1978 Starships and Spacemen
1978 The Complete Warlock
1978 Simian Combat
1978 The Infinity System
1978 John Carter, Warlord of Mars
1978 Legacy
1978 High Fantasy
1978 Age of Chivalry
1978 Gamma World
1978 Once Upon a Time in the West
1978 What Price Glory?!
1978 RuneQuest
1978 Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier
1978 Realm of Yolmi
1979 Buccaneer
1979 Heroes
1979 Mortal Combat
1979 Commando
1979 Ysgarth
1979 Villians and Vigilantes
1979 Crimson Cutlass
1979 Gangster!
We forgot the other 40 or so for a reason.
The 1980s had 227, the 1990s had 3419. If any of us can off the top of our heads name more than one in ten of them I'll eat my copy of the AD&D DMG.
Then when these authours got successful they fell victim to the Successful Authour Bloat. Ever notice that in any series of novels, the later ones are longer than the earlier ones? That's because when an authour is new, the editor goes through and viciously cuts out the crap. When an authour's pooular and successful, the authour tells the editor to fuck off. Thus blather, cf Wheel of Time, or AD&D1e.
The entire rpg industry was FOUNDED by incompetent amateurs. We need more of 'em. Most of what is produced is crap. That's alright, we
need the crap. It's the rocks we crush up to find the gold within.
Edit: corrected figures for 1st eds only