If we release our newer operator version without the correct metadata, it will release that new version just fine but at the same time it will unpublish all earlier versions in the channel, making the new version effectively the only entry in that channel.

This happens when a new operator bundle ships with a "skipRange" annotation but without the "replaces" property in the operators OLM metadata (CSV):
bmer CSV

How to fix this ?

We need start shipping out releases with the "replaces" property in addition to the "skipRange" property.|
See all the details looking for "skipRange" in the section "Update Graph Gotchas":

Best practices

All bmer releases are affected so this ocpbug must be backported properly.