Yes, the www.remarpro.com plugins team sent us an email saying that our news, even if we asked for user consent and it’s prefixed with “UpdraftPlus:” cannot be added to the WordPress News widget. The plugin has done this for several years.
They gave us a deadline of today to reply by to confirm that we’d change it. We confirmed the same day (2 weeks ago) that we’d do so. But today they’ve told us that we they actually required us to reply to their follow-up email (which said nothing more than the initial email which we’d already said we’re comply with) too, which we didn’t, and so we had the plugin closed without further notice for not doing so. I find this absurd. But anyway, we then complied within an hour or two of being informed that we’d been closed…. and then they’ve now said that because they closed it, they have a further protocol to comply with for opening it again, which means changing the coding style throughout the plugin to conform with new preferences that they’ve brought it over recent years.
How long this will take is unfortunately not in our control – we’re complying with new hard requirements as fast as they’re revealed to us. I’ve pointed out to them that it’s Saturday December 23rd, in the afternoon, when they did this and it’d be much more reasonable to open the plugin since it now complies with their requirements for the “News”, and that anything else should be left to deal with whilst leaving the plugin open.