Not really. They could just distribute things anyway, and simply invoke the license-termination clauses as soon as any infringement is detected by claimants - s

Not really. They could just distribute things anyway, and simply invoke the license-termination clauses as soon as any infringement is detected by claimants - similarly to how (I expect) they would treat claims of copyright infringements on game assets. They are just being obtuse - which looks fishy when coupled with VLC's claims that they wouldn't allow them back in even if all LGPL code was removed. They probably don't want competition for some component.