After reading this thread, I didn’t see any mentions of the MakeCode Arcade VS Code Extension, just wanted to put that out there that it exists! (I haven’t personally used it yet, but it looks well done, then again, I prefer Webstorm…which is now free! So maybe an extension for Webstorm would be cool as well…but that’s a different tangent…)
The Visual Studio plugin is actually quite nice and I use it when I’m doing some serious work (half the time trying to understand how the whole thing operates under the covers).
It does have some limits though such as multiplayer not being available (online or just the extra buttons to test locally).
The Visual Studio aspect was a good half of my reasoning for the “why isn’t it more popular”. You can use a full IDE to make games… if that’s not “a real game framework” then what is?! 
Yes, although there are tools that have been developed to create executables
Yes we can wrap websites into executables via Electron or Tauri but I’m not sure how many games exist like that (I’m out of the loop on that one). But one of the biggest things that I get requested is “ok great how do I get this game in Steam?” and I don’t have a solid answer (besides the complexities of Steam itself).
especially supporting different OSes and configurations and even code signing and similar
Different platforms are already supported, the funny thing is I feel like the ones that are supported are actually more complex than a .exe or .dmg. The current .elf export IS an executable already just built for Linux, so it’s almost as if it’s | | this close!
I keep thinking about a community site but fear that it becomes “yet another thing” that fractures the community, but that won’t stop me from experimenting if nothing else to just learn
Thanks for the inspiration @UnsignedArduino and all that you’ve done and did, I can see the trail of things you’ve created and it’s impressive. It just feels now that the excitement of this platform has died down, there are extensions in github being automatically labeled as “will be archived” because they haven’t been touched in years!