Sort of. If you earned >$1 million in revenues in the past 12 months, you have two options:
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Pay 2.5% of your monthly revenue
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Pay a runtime fee based on your monthly downloads
So basically, they made it optional, but you still have to pay 2.5% which is still significant. Otherwise you can use the runtime fee and report data yourself (it will probably be cheaper)
Actually, yes, by a big margin. Back in ~2011 mobile games were actually trying to be great. Games like Edge Extended, World of Goo, Bounce Boing Voyage, Zenonia 2 & 3, etc.
I remember early Humble Bundles being full of exciting games for mobile, now you'll be lucky to find just one of them that isn't filled to the brim with MTX or ads.