Why is Marketplace approval required?

We’ve just released an update for a Jira DC app that has been on the Marketplace for years. That release updates the app to make it compatible with Jira 11.x. Strangely, it’s been entered into a Marketplace approval queue. Why would that be?

Oh hey! There ya go! It’s just been approved. Strange process, but all’s well I guess.

It’s not always that well. Twice since they introduced the approval on every release, we have had a week-long degradation where we were unable to publish any new releases for several days: Please change the broken Data Center app release approval process