deleted by creator

Maybe sounds like the art from Fantastic Planet?

Well, there’s two ways you could interpret that:

• As you say, ‘shelf life’, how long they can sell the game with their voice in it
• Or, ‘voice time’, as in, contracts are negotiated in total duration of voice lines. Exceeding that number requires renegotiation.

I suspect it’s the latter as that is more similar to how voice work is already done, to my understanding.