Hence why I said most file hosts and pretty sure none of the uploaders here are paying hosts for unrestricted downloads for everyone nor are most indie devs who are already struggling to make a profit.
As to devs not knowing how to optimize that's often a problem with indie devs but it doesn't take a whole lot of googling to learn what file formats give you the best quality per size which is a good start so they have no real excuse other than laziness. Even the argument of "I want the best quality" doesn't hold up when some fool is producing 4k pngs using assets that are at best 720p resulting in the final images being 10+ times bigger than they ever have a need to be to have 100% quality of the original source materials.
Also VPNs will often cause as many or more issues with download limits than they fix cause you have no control over how the VPN routes the data. More than a few times I've been blocked from downloading from file hosts because other users on the same VPN downloading from those hosts were getting routed through the same end point IP resulting in temporary blocks based on concurrent download limits or downloads per time period limits. This is to say nothing of the occasional outright bans due to some idiot doing something they shouldn't have and getting the VPN's IP banned by the host.
