Here we have Bethesda (and when I say Bethesda I actually mean their corporate overlord Zenimax) acting essentially like an Italian Renaissance Patron. Kiss the ring, bend the knee, get a contract.
The original model through Valve was greedy as hell (which is more a hallmark of Valve’s shitty Steam policy, hence the exodus of larger developers to private channels and the rise of GoG and the Humble Store), but anyone could play if they wanted to and any question of value was left to the mod maker and the community.

I said it before, the outcry before was nothing but children screaming that they didn’t want to pay for mods at all. This is just a spray of camouflage over outsourced dlc.