This does seem like a nasty side effect of the onerous recertification policy that VMware has enacted. When there is no later version of a certification exam available for a given track and the candidate has already taken that exam, the candidate shouldn't be forced outside that track in order to maintain the disposition of the certification. The right thing to do for those impacted candidates is to extend their expiration date until a new version of the exam is published (plus grace period). If anything, it shows how terribly lacking VMware Education is at ensuring exams are published and made available to candidates within a timely manner. For example, vSphere 6.7 was released on 17 April 2018, approximately 8.5 months ago, and there is still no VCP-DCV cert to match. Even perhaps worse, the VCAP-DCV Deploy exam only very recently became available for the vSphere 6.5 release after more than a year (and being lapped by an entire version) without.