I have a couple of Android devices, an Anbernic RG353P and an Amazon Fire HD 10. The first device doesn’t have any Play Store included and I’m not interested in installing it, as I get most of my apps from F-Droid. The Amazon Tablet was a cheap pickup during black friday and I have bought a few games from the Amazon Appstore before but again, I’m usually I’m just downloading apps from F-Droid and some games from Itch which I manage with Mitch: https://gardenapple.itch.io/mitch
I don’t think not uploading APKs protects you from bad actors, as folks could get the APK from their phones after downloading it from the Play Store using “adb”, be they so inclined and modify or redistribute it as they wish.