Options for creating iMessage sticker packs?

I've been looking into making a sticker pack of my friends cat for their birthday, and just want to confirm that the only way you can add a sticker pack to the stickers app in iMessage (like how animoji or iwatch sticker headings appear) is creating an app with xcode?

Seems silly to require someone to have a developer account to organize stickers with their friends lol. The only non-xcode solution i've found is to use a separate app that makes it really easy, (I tested with sticker studio), but that requires anyone you send the sticker packs to, to have the same app, and it isn't listed in the stickers section of iMessage, it has it's own separate space.

Am I missing something? This seems like an easy to implement thing that anyone who uses stickers would want. Is it just done this way so you have another thing to buy on the App Store?