If you still haven't played it, check out Riven which was recently released. It's a complete modern remake (plus some changes) of the sequel to Myst.
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I have actually been enjoying this game with friends but I do play MoBAs and shooters so that's not too surprising. Seems quite timely since Overwatch 2 has been consistently disappointing everyone.
There are plenty of small indie studios that won't sell out, we just don't know who they are.
Palworld still ended up costing millions of dollars, although not tens of millions.
I think the dev pays for Imgur and other media hosting site APIs so that is also a factor. No other app displays media as integrated as Sync.
This goes way back to when Google first introduced IAP. They were pushing to remove dupes from the store because it caused separate reviews and ratings. It could be that they just temporarily enforced it and now it's not a concern for them anymore.
I remember when this happened to Sync for Reddit. Unfortunately Google Play Store, like most of these app stores, can enforce almost anything they want even if it's outside of their policy because some stuff is so vague. And it's usually hard to get clear information from anyone when your app gets pulled or whatever.