It reads like the artist was looking for an excuse to stop drawing pixel art rather than any sort of further introspection as to why Auro might be encountering issues. It's utterly ridiculous that he thinks that the retro-game market is somehow splintering on the issue of making the pixels go away as increasingly sprite filters are being viewed in a negative light versus getting the experience as it actually was at the time.

The whole 'But customers want HD!' era has long since ended, with many of the most popular hits on PC games being pixel-based. The issue was never fully the artwork, but the cutthroat nature of the mobile market.

That said, the artwork of Auro reeks of faux-retroism and unlike Shovel Knight which embraced it, it seems like they were only really willing to go half-way.