Get a Steam Deck? You can hook it up like a PC, use it sat around. Though its not a powerhouse. Wait and see how the Steam Machine fairs? There's still a good second hand market for parts too.
Its a shitty time at the moment with scumbag companies and AI, so consumers are completely fucked.
Also: Fuck subscriptions.
Plus the game pass versions of games are complete dogshit compared to the Steam versions most of the time.
It's not indie, it had the full support of a publisher. Indie is a handful of people making a game with their own money, not getting a millions of dollars in investment from a publisher.
The major rub of Gen AI art is profiting off of others work. If you’re never displaying it and don’t ever want it shown then who cares?
This doesnt even make sense, you just answered your own question. The major rub is exactly why we care.
There's no red tape. From the site I provided, the license allows them to use it privately or commercially.
It's placeholder and from all the options out there they could have found something.
There's also all the environmental problems with AI.
Why go through the effort of AI then for them? It's the same amount of work, well less even, you'll get a full pack of textures at different resolutions with UV maps and all, versus AI where you then have to check it and potentially do more.
It says it all, when purchasing a texture is now "stupid busywork". You literally type in what you want, get hundreds of results, buy one, put in the game. They used UE5, Epic Games have Fab and it's integrated into the engine, they even give away lots of free assets there (granted that is probably going to fill with AI slop soon). There's loads of other options out there too.
This argument of "its placeholder textures" is null.
Why are you being obtuse? If the in-house designers didn't want to make some placeholder textures, they could have used a marketplace instead of AI. Are you just going to keep going in circles?