I've had a Google developer console/play account for a decade+. Recently had to send some proof of identity stuff in their anti-spam thing -- which I did because who knows one day I might care about the account -- but I haven't released anything there in eight years. No threats of closing my account.

Did they instead just warn that they would unpublish the app? Google does have minimum API levels that they slowly move forward, and they will unpublish your app if you don't periodically rebuild and resubmit.