The interpretation is correct.
This is mainly to thwart people who, in the past, have made things prior to the jam and explicitly for the jam, released them publicly within the jam's period, and claimed that since they are publicly available they were allowed to use them. This behavior is generally unwanted since:
- The obscurity due to the timing of releasing the asset more or less promises the team near exclusive use.
- The assets released are often created with a singular aesthetic or focus in mind, giving the original creator a significant leg up in creating cohesive visuals ahead of the competition whereas the average participant uses third party assets to supplement.
The rule has some clear complications, especially with long time creators, tool creators and pack creators, so we do accept exception requests. If you need to make such a request, feel free to send me a message on Discord via DevTalk or e-mail me at Nai@SpooktoberVNJam.com with details. We will likely deny anything that was released less than six months ago.
Next year we are intending to explicitly include assets made by the creator as long as they have a visible and cataloged publish date of some period of time before the jam, though the wording isn't settled yet.