I think that's actually the issue. There was no current association with the companies account anymore.
Having separate google accounts for work and personal use does not actually solve this, since google has an algorithm to figure out if the accounts are used by the same person.[0][1]
OP never said that "there was no current association with the companies account". In fact, they say explicitly that there was an association, because H still had permissions on an (unpublished) game that was part of their Play Store account.