Bethesda has been trying to monetize user created content for its games for a while now- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was the first game Valve tried paid mods out with on Steam, and while that was retracted less than a week later due to player outrage, Bethesda announced the Creation Club, which seemed to be something similar, at E3 this year.
One of the criticisms that this initiative has been most subject to is that it is basically Bethesda trying to monetize mods again– and taking to Twitter, Bethesda’s Pete Hines tried to address that, and other criticism, that they get, noting that the Creation Club is neither paid mods, nor ‘mini-DLC’ (a term Hines himself has used to categorize the Creation Club in the past); instead, it is something entirely new, a new category to which the older labels no longer apply.
I personally have no principled opposition to paid mods- but I do wish Hines would stop beating around the bush here. Creation Club is absolutely an attempt to monetize user content that would ordinarily be classified as ‘mods’. It is what it is, and Bethesda should be upfront about that.