And after paying those $25 they are free to spam the review team with hundreds of submissions? Doesn't sound sustainable to me.
If App Stores charged a fee per submission, that would drastically cut down on spam submissions, and free up resources for those of us who actually put a lot of effort into our apps.
Once you set a fee I know apps will be updated less often, it'd be sad for open-source apps - which I'd say are the most useful of all apps on Google Play.
So a fee on initial submission... updates not charged. Will still put a crimp in the spam-app floods.
If you spend hundreds of hours working on something, paying a reasonable fee to publish it is not going to stop anyone.
Which barely covers a competent person sipping a coffee whilst glancing at the title of your app.