These kinds of lists have to factor in popularity too though. Otherwise the top 1,000 would all be shovelware with 1 or 2 negative votes. It's not interesting or useful to point out that the games no one is going to play anyway are bad. A game that's popular enough to even make it onto the list obviously isn't going to actually literally be the worst game on Steam. That's just how it has to work.
Most people aren't going around checking the commit history on every piece of software they use. The git repository being archived made the Linux news rounds, so now a bunch of people are newly aware. It's not complicated.