Moves like this are super-disheartening. I hope designers and developers keep submitting themes (I'm personally investing over $10K in two high quality free themes to come next year), but favoritism and exeptions and calling update routes through GitHub wacky all side-step major issues in instilling developer confidence. Fairness is a thing that matters.

Releasing through GitHub first and then waiting for .org seems like a good solution for fellow makers. Months and months and months just don't work for long-term ally building, especially when line-cutting, for whatever reason, is approved.