Bethesda is now owned by Microsoft meaning Starfield will be on gamepass day 1. Gamepass already heavily restricts how you mod your games with protected folder bullshit at the OS level.
I have a feeling that it'll be really hard to use nexus with Starfield if not entirely impossible as Beth and Msoft will want to kite you through their new mod store where they take a sizeable chunk from mod makers
There was a huge backlash, but they did it anyway and there are still paid mods in Skyrim SE and Fallout 4. I'm with OP on this one, in fact I think they'll go a step further and lock down the creation kit for anyone who doesn't join "the marketplace".
Paid mods open an entire legal can of worms that I can't really explain other than saying that every single intellectual property law nerd that I went to law school with (a fucking depressing number of them) were salivating at the amount of billable work that this would generate for whatever firm they worked for. I cannot stress enough how bad of an idea it is to begin to sell paid community mods. Especially now that Microsoft is involved, every potential claimant would just be seeing dollar signs, and the lawyers are fucking sharks who smell blood in the water the microsecond that the first case is filed.
But they're already doing it no?
Creation content is commissioned.
I don't think Microsoft would allow it. They so badly need a win without reservations when it comes to releasing a big game. We'll see though.
Never underestimate M$' ability to release terrible products because they deputized a single boomer product manager to do whatever seemed cool to them.