Shower thought that came from seeing yet another complaint about "yet another Stardew-like"

Okay. Yeah. We live under capitalism and for sure part of it is some dev teams going "lemme get a piece of that pie!"

But.

I also think for some indie devs it's basically high-effort fanfiction. Maybe they loved Stardew, or Harvest Moon. And like a lot of fanfic writers they went "but what if..." bears, vampires, pirates, magical girls, Pokemon, or whatever other AU or fun twist. (Which makes me wonder why I haven't yet seen a sapphic-- or orphic!-- coffee shop AU of Stardew, but I'll keep waiting!)

Hopefully this made sense, I haven't had enough caffeine yet.