why does is being low-budget and "one-man-studio" mean it's a cash grab? I would say it's actually more likely these are a fruit of the developer's passion than something made by a larger studio.
Jim Sterling coined the term "asset flip" to describe cheap, rushed, barely-playable games cobbled together with Unity and pre-bought art assets. These games are a shameless attempt to cash in on the latest fad with an absolute minimum of effort. A substantial proportion of indie releases on Steam (and a majority on Android) fall into this category.
Maybe. There’s also prolly a ton of teenagers who are very excited about being able to make a game with tools and stores available to them.
The funny thing about calling it "asset flip" is that at the same time they were adamant that what matters is gameplay rather than the graphics.
If you've seen some of the videos of people playing these "asset flips" you would have seen that they have very little in terms of gameplay. They are also full of bugs and appear mostly unfinished.
Yeah, it's an insult that's pretty indiscriminately thrown around.