What Is Asset Flipping in Gaming and Is it Always Bad?

Some games feature pre-made, recycled, or modified assets, which sometimes seems like a rip-off for gamers. But is it?

Asset flipping is an increasing phenomenon in the world of gaming. Particularly so since the advent of gaming marketplaces such as Steam and the Nintendo eShop.

But what is asset-flipping? And is it a bad thing all the time? Let's delve into the concept.

What Is Asset Flipping?

Asset flipping is a term applied to the practice of buying or using basic, pre-made/pre-rendered assets in video game development, without changing them or adding original assets around them. We often used it as a pejorative term, and we generally consider games made using poorly considered, flipped assets to be shovelware.

For example, say you're a beginner who wants to develop a game in Unity or a similar development engine. If you're a novice, you might buy some assets or a demo game from the Unity Asset Store to use as a foundation for building your first game. Assets like this can also help you have a pre-made world, so you can focus on other areas of expertise, like game physics or enemy AI.

Using assets in this way is fine. In fact, using pre-made assets to make your game is also fine, as long as your game is actually playable. If you've ironed out any glitches, created some nice atmospheric effects, and your characters and NPCs work in harmony, then there's no reason you shouldn't market your game.

However, just throwing a bunch of assets together that don't work, or simply renaming a demo intended as a foundation, in order to just make a game quickly and then market it with no thought, is when asset flipping becomes a nefarious practice.

Related: What Is Shovelware in Gaming?

Where Might You Find Asset-Flipped Titles?

Honestly? You'll find games with flipped assets everywhere. Check literally any marketplace such as Steam, PlayStation Store, Microsoft Store, and the Nintendo eShop, and you'll find countless asset-flipped titles clogging up the digital storefront.

One excellent example is a full game asset available via the Unity Asset store, called Hammer 2. This is a full game template, which its developers have designed as a base to build a new game from. However, there are several shameless asset flips doing the rounds, some even more brazen than others.

The description of the Hammer 2 asset from its devs, XFormGames, says this. As you can see, using assets from this game is absolutely fine, the devs even say so:

This example project is made for amateur developers that want to make the step towards a releaseable game. Use full scripts, code snippets or architecture in your own game.

Look through the eShop, though, and you'll stumble across a game called The Bullet: Time of Revenge. Look familiar? Yep, that's because it contains flipped assets from Hammer 2. However, take a look at this beauty; Hammer 2: Reloaded. At least The Bullet: Time of Revenge "developers" bothered to change the name of the asset they flipped and sold! No such luck with Pix Arts and its blatant asset flip, though.

This is just one example of a game we could consider an asset flip and one which we would consider a negative use of pre-made assets.

Is Asset Flipping Always Bad?

No, it isn't. Think about how much time it takes to develop a game, even with crunch culture being very much a thing.

Would you rather wait 20 years while a developer builds literally everything from scratch, or would you be OK with a few generic assets used as part of an original title, in order to save time and concentrate on more important things than background NPCs you can't interact with?

Let's face it, the answer is probably going to be the latter. Lots of game devs use pre-made assets. It isn't a problem and we shouldn't lambast them for it. It becomes a problem when people shamelessly rip an entire base game from the Unity/Unreal Asset store and sell it as their own for profit.

So, perhaps the actual issue is with the terminology. A growing number of people use the term asset flip to describe any game with pre-made assets, and do so in a pejorative sense. Such games then become objects of derision, which is harmful for developers and is also underserved.

Don't forget, then, that using assets isn't a bad thing. At least, not until you're just plagiarising other people's work and passing it off as your own for gamers' hard earned cash.

Related: What Is Crunch Culture in Video Games?

To Flip or Not to Flip?

As you can see, there is an issue with how we refer to the use of pre-made assets in games. There is nothing wrong with it. At the end of the day, even asset flippers in the negative sense of the phrase aren't doing anything illegal. That doesn't make it right, but it still isn't breaking any laws, or rules of the particular asset marketplace they used.

Perhaps gamers need to fully appreciate how game development works, and how time consuming it is. And how, ultimately, using a few pre-made assets in the background of your game isn't doing anyone any harm, or detracting from the overall gameplay experience.

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