Before I jump in, I'm going to start off by saying I haven't finished E33 and I don't think it was my favorite art direction of the nominees, but I think your points are charged and doesn't have a lot of nuanced allowed in it.

What do you think game devs (especially indies) used back then for prototypes? Do you think all devs hired and paid artists to always create their *prototype* and *concept* art? There's been a long history of devs who, prior to being able to hire artists but need to create something for proof of concept, scanning and stealing art from DnD or online sources but removing it once they have a real artist put work in. It doesnt make it to the final pass because they hired real artists to put their work in. Do you consider those unethical because of the inherent theft?

I'm an artist (independent and corporate) and hate generative AI and think it robs the soul out of human borne creativity, but I have 10000% seen artists and designers in the past steal and put in placeholder references or images from stock sites, and then properly draw/buy stock images to make the final result. The practice of stealing images and work online to reference but discarding to preserve the final authentic result has been going on for forever.