Could stickers be mapped instead of formed?

[Chris Böhnke]

I don't really get why texture maps aren't used for stickers in the first place?

One argument that comes to my mind really quick is metallic colours.

Use of metallics (gold, silver, blue, pink, titanium, copper) on stickers has increased a lot these days when compared to pre 2010 (I might be looking a bit too much on the Icons/UCS sets here, but I guess Ninjago and Friends in particular are also very keen on these).

When using texmaps, the render doesn't get reflection info (amongst other things) so the end result will likely look less "impressive" when done in a higher quality rendering.

Of cause you could "edit out" these areas and fill them in with the proper LDraw colour, but then it's not the quick work flow you are aiming for anyways.

EDIT:
Other issues I see:
*Colour Mismatch - For certain stickers it is common to match the base part's colour around the outer areas. This often poorly achieved on un-altered scans/BIA-files (see https://library.ldraw.org/parts/32072). Not long ago, there was a discussion about edge colours on sticker shortcuts with the result that people preferred a "it looks like a print" look; using more and more raw texmaps will likely work against this desire
*Innaccuracies - Some of the BIA textures might be early designs/prototypes that poorly reflect the real image
*Minor Issues - Stud.io compatibility (maybe other programs too?), copyright issues, file handling (embedded single-file vector .dat vs base .dat + texmap)