Why are the export files bloated?

[ALUCARD]

I noticed that the exported project has an extreme excess of files, as in:

These are all the assets, but they are all folders:

Within each of these folders there is another folder just labeled 1:

Then within that folder is the asset:

What is the purpose of this? Why cant the actual asset just be where the folders are, this seems like 3x the amount of files that would be required. This actually caused problems for me when I tried to upload the game to itch, and I had to email the support to get a higher file cap.

[mvaligursky]

It’s been organize this way in the past, and it has not changed since. Those folders are asset ids.

Note that folders themselves are never downloaded. This means your published application only downloads actual files, and the number of folders has no impact on the total number of downloaded files.

[yaustar]

Can my public project be easily stolen?

The folder name is the asset id. It was done this way because it’s possible to have assets the same name but still be unique by id. Remember this was not meant to be modified after publishing so the actual folder structure doesn’t matter It is the same number of files regardless of the folder structure

[yaustar]

Worth noting that the ‘folders’ in the editor are virtual folders. They don’t actually exist.