Let's try to read the content behind the article trying to be as rational as possible (difficult on GAF these days, I know; especially for a Nintendo related thread), shall we?
*ahem*
I don't think it can be denied that Damon Baker has been doing a commendable job in the past few years to make the eShop a more welcoming place for developers: trying to court them, being receptive to their requests, giving to them the possibility to get different ratings with one specific process (the IARC certification), and being the first console hardware house to allow Humble Bundles are all commendable initiatives, that brought support especially to the Wii U eShop in spite of the historically poor hardware sales. And on the Switch we've seen a further evolution of his efforts, given how it's even easier to publish a game for all the different markets (one of the mos talked-about examples of advancements in the Switch era; but you can also see several recent articles on the matter from different outlets - among them, the one Cerium keeps quoting).
Also, I'll be honest, I'm not against the curator approach for the first eShop year / two years, in spite of being someone who would like to hear about the least amount of obstacles to publishing games on a platform as possible. No contradiction here, surprisingly enough: simply, I understand that their intent is to create a healthy, well-regarded digital storefront through the release of a good amount of (potentially) good / high quality products, as well as trying to address the potential discoverability issue from the get go, which is something that would be extremely difficult if the amount of releases was ridiculously high right from the first few months. Basically, not enough room to breathe for way too many deserving games. Considering how it's a temporary approach, I can perfectly comprehend the intents behind it.
However, it's also true that the stories in NintendoLife's article deal with several developers, even long-standing eShop partners, who have encountered important difficulties in approaching people to talk with due to partial mismanagement / not enough allocation of resources for the team. And this is NOT positive, even in presence of a curated approach: communication between companies and developers is important. Do you remember that Eurogamer article with the tale of an unnamed developer working on a Wii U launch game? That was a sign of a hardware vendor not ready for a major launch, which resulted in the developing environment suffering. Unfortunately, I can understand extremely small developers (even in the indie world) having to wait more than others to get dev-kits, it's the gradual distribuition and availability of dev kits, but here it seems that there could have been a bit too much stingyness in play, even for a curated approach. Recently, Damon Baker made it so devs on Twitter can DM him pitches for games on Switch, which is a potential more direct way to communicate with the company: not a recipe for unquestionable success, though given that we have both a positive outcome (Robert Zeboyd) and a negative one (Gualtica). But yes, there seems to be a biit more openess right now (we've had different recent announcements coming from devs who also announced they wee just certified as eShop devs), and I'm sure it'll keep on going. Hopefully, dev kits and communciation become as reasonably spread as possible.
Speaking of discoverability...yeah, I'm going to criticise the current eShop setup as well: it's not awful, I like how clean it is, but we've already heard stories of games disappearing from the "available content" cathegory because its tiles are limited (for now). Plus, there are no special cathegories right now - except for current charts, which can be useful as a discoverability tool as well, sure, but it's still not enough. I am absolutely sure the eShop's layout will keep on getting updates, but, as said earlier, I hope they act fast enough.
. I'll keep you informed if I get good news, although I still have low hopes...
