Pretty much every decent game dev company that wasn't owned by a publisher has done some form of licensed contract work along with original games. DICE is a pretty big example balancing out Battlefield with zero budget license titles (Barbie Secret Agent) and full budget contracts (Rallisport Challenge, Midtown Madness 3)
Yep, it's how independent developers survived the market back in the day. Sometimes you had big projects, often you had small low budget projects to keep people busy & keep some income coming in.