You have a good point. and it could be why we don’t see deep development and only just additions with simple interactions. Either way, they still require contractors but its a matter of how long they are on it i’m sure. And if they are fulltime, then their efforts are required on other games. So it would be very surface level coding rather than unique architecture.
That compensation would result in a long term effort of developing something unique or patented. Probably few are scared to jump into deep coding even if they made a custom system. My assumption is there is something unique but there isn’t a job contract for it.

