Either that or he could install a skin with the program that he has made up so that way for sure he knows no one else would have used it. Can't be that hard when the program is first ran it looks for that materials directory and places an archived texture in there for itself to use. But then again I am no programmer so to me that actually seems quite hard. Lol
That sounds like the perfect solution, actually. "dev/stairsplaceholder" or something like that.