I mean that's the same argument as youtubers complaining about partner programme enrollment requirements being raised. Do you genuinely think your app should not have 12 testers? What if some youtuber picks it up for a promo, you get 1000 users in a day and all of them hit the same bug or someone finds a way to break the app and read everyone's actions done in the app?

Hobbyist are cool and all but I'm sure google got sick of one update publishers a long time ago and decided to only allow apps that can actually attract any sort of public.