Ah my apologies. I guess I should not have assumed assets would be custom. I personally don't use anything else on released products for this reason exactly
But my point still does stand. The team can still release their work, you just added that it has the possibility that they might not be doing all the work
Quite, but it also becomes an issue of maintaining documentation on assets changing hands, etc.
More than once in my career I've had a project hard core hit the breaks because COTS dependancies didn't move forward or were otherwise just not available.
Now, I'll grant you that this might not ultimately be a huge issue. Texture library unavailable? Sound library unavailable? Replacable. Not optimal, but replaceable.
Code libraries may be a bigger deal.
Not to mention just the general negatives we'll have to deal with if we shutter and cannot for some reason release absolutely 100% of a "roll your own CoT server" on shutdown day +1.
What we want to do and what we are ultimately able to do in the end may not be compatible. I'd rather not commit to something I cannot be certain is at least 90% attainable. I'm funny that way.