Since the 15 July App Store Connect submission-flow change, I cannot submit my app. Posting the API-level diagnosis because I haven't seen it stated in the other threads, and the UI is actively misleading.
What the UI shows: subscription group "In Review", both subscriptions "Prepare for Submission", Add for Review greyed out. Submitting fails with HTTP 409 on POST /iris/v1/reviewSubmissions/{id} (SUBMIT_REVIEW_SUBMISSION_RESPONSE).
What the App Store Connect API actually shows:
My subscriptionGroupVersion (version 1) is in state IN_REVIEW. No reviewSubmissionItem in any submission references it. All prior submissions are COMPLETE with every item REMOVED. It is orphaned — it went into review with a submission that was rejected, and was never released when that submission completed. Both subscriptions report READY_TO_SUBMIT; their subscriptionVersions are READY_FOR_REVIEW. The products themselves are healthy. The UI's "Prepare for Submission" is wrong. Controlled test: submitting the app version alone succeeds. Re-adding the two subscription versions and submitting → 409, every time. The group version never changes state through that cycle. So the 409 is caused specifically by attaching subscriptions whose parent group version is locked.
There is no developer-side fix. subscriptionGroupVersions exposes only POST and GET — no PATCH, no DELETE. Clearing this requires server-side intervention. Same symptoms in posts 838340, 838348, 838369, 838384, 838421, 838425, 838456, 838465, 838473, 838509, 838596. Unfortunately there was no reply from apple that I could find yet.
Two asks: has anyone had a stuck group version actually reset, and what did Support do? And if an Apple engineer is reading please confirm whether resetting a subscriptionGroupVersion from IN_REVIEW is something Developer Support can action, or whether it needs a Feedback report.
Ok so I finally managed to resubmit, hopefully this helps someone else:
-
A new subscription group cleared it. I created a second group with new product IDs, added both subscriptions, attached it to a new app version, and it submitted first try. It's WAITING_FOR_REVIEW now. I did not delete anything. Product identifiers burn permanently once assigned, a group can only be deleted when empty, so thats a risk I didn't want to take. I simply abandoned the old group and will probably delete it once review is through (or support needs it for evidence idk).
-
The subscription group must itself be an item in the review submission. This is the part I'd missed, and I think that might be the cause:
Inspecting GET /v1/reviewSubmissions/{id}/items, the submission item IDs are base64 of {submissionId}|{typeCode}|{targetId}:
6 = appStoreVersion 18 = subscriptionVersion 19 = subscriptionGroupVersion My working submission has four items: one 6, one 19, two 18. Every one of my failed submissions had three (not 19). The group version was never in any of them.
I can't definitively say that's the cause but it makes sense given 19 (subscription group) is whats currently stuck "In Review" although it was never submitted.
In any case, creating a new subscription group not just new subscriptions fixed the submission issue for me and might help someone here as well. I'll update this thread when I hear back from support.