PC Gaming

Todd....

also users cant exactly build huge mod lists if many mods are paid

I think that maybe it would be better if there was something like an effort to set up paid third-party large DLC. Bethesda doesn't really sell small things, on the order of what a lot of mod authors provide (well, they tried to sell individual models and skins in Fallout 76 , which I don't think has been fantastically successful). They've never had an industry where one could a la carte buy individual game mechanics from them. What they're known for is making full-on expansions and selling those. I can imagine an industry where third parties can sell those maybe working out better.

Already have. Fallout 4's mod store has so much mod "dlc" microtransactions on it that when you add it all up, it's several times the cost of the base game and all of its dlc combined.

Modders should be compensated. I'm not too convinced Microsoft's cut won't be too big to make the whole thing worth charging for. It's a big ask to sell mods since that's not the norm. Patreon or something might be more viable way for modders.

I'm hopeful that the approach will be closer to how Minecraft works, now that they're under the same umbrella. But it seems more likely they'll just monetize things heavily and push creators to monetize. (e.g., mods over a certain size require a minimum payment amount to 'recoup bandwidth costs')

I mean, there are vendors of adult content in the world. I could hypothetically imagine that as long as Microsoft can create arms-length distance for their brand and not be directly-tied to it from a business standpoint -- like, maybe they license to another vendor who deals with that -- that they'd be okay with it.

I discovered that there are sort of "tiers" that wound up getting created around mods in the game, where you have sites that object to content and then the crowd that wants that going off and creating a group somewhere else, and people on one site refer to the site that they object to with euphemisms and the like

Fallout has historically dealt with some topics that some consumers are not going to be happy with. Drug and alcohol use, slavery, violence, killing, dismemberment, torture, prostitution, suicide, rape, and cannibalism. It's had ESRB ratings itself to facilitate blocking access to it for people who object to that, and Steam will throw up a pro forma "are you 18" message before showing their Fallout 4 page to a viewer.

Bethesda has historically not wanted to associate with some of the content that goes on Nexusmods, stuff that has characters running around in sexualized outfits or being fully-nude.

Nexusmods, in turn, has not wanted to associate with some thing that go on on LoversLab, like animated sex scenes, sexual slavery, forced gender changing, player participant in rape, bestiality, tentacle rape, BDSM, probably more that I'm unaware of.

The LoversLab crowd draws the line at sexualized depiction of adolescents, which group apparently jumped over to Schaken-Mods.

The Schaken-Mods crowd considers sexualized depiction of preadolescents to be objectionable, and those people apparently jumped over to another site whose name I cannot for the life of me recall, or I'd link to it, but IIRC has "pure" in the name, and there they've got work on scenarios with child molestation and suchlike.

googles

No, not "pure", All The Fallen.

I'm pretty sure that the all of the above object to copyright-infringing content, stuff ripped from other mods or video games, or mods that the mod author wanted taken down, and I think I've seen links before to some site that archives some of those.

My guess is that there are probably other niche sites that I'm unaware of that smack into one community's social norms and relocated as well. And I'm sure that there could be more. If LoversLab weren't fine with furry or LGBT content, I'd bet that those would have their own sites.

Those communities, while often objecting very much to each other's social norms, seem to more-or-less leave each other alone, as they've drawn up their lines and seem to stay on their own sides of them. And they do have some level of mutual symbiosis, as they build up on content on the other sites. Sometimes a mod author will object to a site for one reason or another -- the Nexusmods site had a major uproar when they stopped letting mod authors take their mods down, for example, and some authors moved even non-erotic mods to LoversLab, and Schaken-Mods has hosted at least a few mods whose authors objected to some sort of policy on LoversLab, like the mod whose name I don't recall that remodels the male body face. Bethesda knows perfectly well that sexualized content on Nexusmods exists and is fine with sales that are driven by the context there, but don't want their brand associated with it.