Yeah, no. We're talking about Ren'Py, not a AAA title with the latest version of Unreal Engine. My $800 laptop is overkill for developing Summertime Saga. (6-core Ryzen 5 FTW!) DC needs to pay for Photoshop and, ideally, a laptop with discrete graphics and 12 GB of RAM, connected to one or two 4K monitors. The code developers can use whatever hardware they already have. Hardware costs are $0.
With regard to workload for the programmers, I've seen the size of the codebase. Developing for this game is, at most, enough work for one full-time coder. The Tech Update may be the exception to that rule, if they really are rewriting every script file. I've only rewritten 327 out of 1580 script files. This may well be a big job until it's done, at which point adding new scenes or rewriting existing ones will go back to being a one-person job.