>>717753716
Nothing in that post is about asset shops. Modern game devs commission 3rd party studios from India, Malaysia, and any other for-pennies shithole to develop assets for them for as cheap as humanly possible. Indie devs also commission assets. Kenshi, for example, looked like pic related until the dev commissioned an artist to make assets for him. He also commissioned blocks of code, including pathfinding code. And lacking understanding of the stuff he just bought is why he wasn't able to fix pathfinding or rendering issues later on throughout the game's life. Because he didn't put the work on it himself, didn't have a dedicated team member for it, and just took what worked on miscellaneous commissions. Despite all this, Kenshi is a wonderful (sometimes janky) game, belying the post that one is responding to about "no shortcuts" and "lacking discipline to put in the effort himself." Before AI, the wallet and cheap commissions were (and still are) the shortcut to effort.