By the looks of the app list, they seem to be apps and games that used to be popular and have fallen in disrepair and apps that are starved of maintenance attention.
On the one hand it could be an exceptionally good example of "stewardship"; on the other hand, if this is true, what if authorities could later compel Apple to manipulate applications in some malign manner?
I think this is simply updating some api call which no longer works properly, coupled with the terrible "changelogs" that are the norm on the app store. Someone down thread mentioned certificate rollover.
A sensible changelog would be "update expired certificate", or "fix integration with ios 26.2", or "patch security issue"
An actual changelog would be "we're bringing you ever more great new improvements"
Here's the latest Audible one:
> At Audible, we're always making updates and improvements to make your listening experience better.
> If you're experiencing issues, please reach out to customer services. For feedback or suggestions contact us at audible.co.uk/help
This is the same every time, because these changelogs are meaningless.
Then again I found no source for that - and some certificate rollover seems more likely.
⇒ I think that’s unlikely. If some optimization got broken that produces results that bad that it has to be fixed, users would have noticed in those apps that “have not been updated in some time”.