It's possible to make it somewhat good. First, the original image has to be sharp and clean. Lower the filmic grain to the very minimum too.

Then apply the filter mostly to the corners with gradient falloff. Then also set it lower on dark areas. It will leave the effect on bright peripheral areas, which is exactly where it appears on real lenses. With this approach even fairly big values will cause no discomfort for players.

For example, No Man's Sky uses this pattern and people often miss that it has the highest aberration value in history of gaming.

Road to Vostok got over 500 reviews in a few hours and landed at 82% positive reviews on Steam. The number of reviews suggests that he already sold over 15000 copies, probably up to 20000.

Which after all taxes and fees is over $70K in his pocket (most likely more, up to ~$120K).

Not bad for a solo developer but also not the highest conversion rate (he has a lot of followers on social media).

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1963610/Road_to_Vostok/
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If you're waiting for Pragmata, go watch The Creator: a mysterious AI creature emerged in Asia after years of war. But they send the wrong person to kill it.

A visual masterpiece with dumb writing. Still an absolute marvel to watch as a movie.

To make it look real and immersive the director of Rogue One decided to film the whole movie on a consumer grade Sony Camera. And oh, it worked out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6117bR0-MJg
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Sony FX3 to be more specific and they were still approved for IMAX with $4000 camera.