Stepping in each other's toes is part of the game artist workflow. :) Seriously, with the tens of thousands of assets in a medium to large game, the way they c

Stepping in each other's toes is part of the game artist workflow. :) Seriously, with the tens of thousands of assets in a medium to large game, the way they can be reused across the game, and the peculiarities of art and in-house tools, it's not uncommon for two artists to try to modify the same asset. Sometimes it's accidental, sometimes it's necessary, sometimes it is an oversight, sometimes it is an organisational issue as you say... but locking detects the conflict and prevents it from turning into wasted hours or days. Relying on a separate tool to manage this issue is a notable increase in friction. Since the SCM handles changes and conflicts for source code (and thankfully allows merging), why wouldn't it do so for art?