I remember that discourse and am going to call shenanigans. None of that was new and a lot applies to actual software development

• Mods have been plagiarized for as long as their were mods. It was pretty common to find out that mod A stole scripts or even assets from mod B and that mod C is just completely bundling in an outdated version of mod D. “Gamers” generally don’t care and would shit on any creator who wanted credit because they were “causing drama”. I personally know two different Oblivion modders who bailed on “the scene” after someone straight up stole their interiors for one of the high profile mods.
• Utility and support libraries are a thing. Been a minute, but I want to say it was two years ago that almost the entire internet ran the risk of shutting down because someone pulled their color code package out of npm?
• This has always been true and was a big part of the “drama” about the Make Something Unreal contest. But you also get people who try to become “rockstar developers” because they are the main creator. Kojima is notorious for this but a decent number of the folk who came out of the modding scene did the same shit.
• THIS is somewhat unique to Bethesda’s development “model” but, like with DLC, people have a tendency to very much stretch the truth. There was a prototype of a character six years before the DLC about that character was released? Fucking developers are just cutting content so they can sell it to us later!

I am not saying any of these aren’t issues and I do think that adding monetized mods a decade in to the life cycle of a game was a mistake. But, like with most things, if The People are suddenly fixated on and caring about something they had outright mocked a few weeks prior… they still don’t care. They just see a way to be morally righteous while they get what they want.