That's not really a lock-on. The "tube" level of multiplayer stack can usually be abstracted away even easier than graphics API (and almost no modern game engin

That's not really a lock-on. The "tube" level of multiplayer stack can usually be abstracted away even easier than graphics API (and almost no modern game engine supports less than at least two of those). Just compose a packet of a reasonable amount of bytes, configure a connection overall profile (reliable/unreliable, which usually, but not necessary, maps to TCP/UDP), and you're done. I'd be much more afraid of vendor lock-in that actually runs throughought your code base and shapes it.