The trick is that they want paid mods so they can do nothing and get a decade of profit. Consider that many of the mods on Nexus have millions of unique downloads.
Even if they charge 3 bucks a mod and get a third of it, that's tens of millions of dollars with zero effort on their part.
But the primary issue is that the current modding framework they're pushing onto Skyrim doesn't support framework mods, so none of the big mods Skyrim is known for, and have kept it alive so long, could happen.
wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
And that people will hopefully riot about paid mods again. The Skyrim framework flew under the radar because of clever timing. There’s no way it goes un-noticed on their newest flagship game.