Yeah but Apple always required signing, and Google is moving to that too, so they can simply charge you an exorbitant amount to get your app signed, moving the money maker from the store to the dev environment.
and google is surreptitiously flagging several of the top alternatives to their spyware bloatware on android, as a prelude to the change.
this is clearly an action that can be easily attributed to incompetence, but is a thinly veiled way to ensure a flood of verified open source joining early on the ransom for signing whitelist.