An accusation like that, without any evidence presented at all, from an incredibly high profile modder with a massive audience, is extremely serious.
Point 2 needs to consider that this is a "hit piece" as TwistedMexi would call it on twitter where he was upset about an article calling out his early access mod for an early access game as being in poor taste. You can't make an accusation like that, with a platform like that, unless it's...real. Unless it's proven, unless it's not accusatory but descriptive of actual events.
The whole situation is ridiculous. I didn't even know it was widespread at first- I mentioned the early access mod as being "fucking bold, I'll say that much" and it escalated into another modder (who later released their own early access paralives mod) getting absolutely furious, before being blocked by TM on patreon and booted from his discord, presumably after they told him what I had said. (All this took place outside of his discord.)
And my stance at the time was simply "this is pretty silly, putting a mod behind a paywall for a game that aims to never have paid additional content in general".
Only then did I learn I wasn't some random commenter on the situation and in fact the entire damn sims internet had basically the same response- it's absolutely ridiculous to ask people to buy into early access mods for a game that is subject to change at any minute.
He can't even claim it's for having a small, dedicated testing group- his paid patrons number around 5000. The only reason to do this is to hope for a few more people to pay into your patreon where you have a permanently paywalled in-development mod for 7 years that was supposed to be finished 4 years ago, that you charge people for again and again each time it needs an update instead of giving them permanent access once they have paid for it.
At this point, my stance has evolved from "this is a bit silly (phrased as "fucking bold", keeping in mind I use "fucking" like a punctuation and it's not even necessarily an emphasis half the time) to "this is shameful bullshit and this dude makes more in a month and a half than an entire paralives dev makes a year, where does he get off feeling like he has to eke out a few extra subscriptions like this?".
And now that he's making false accusations of theft? Hell, a third creator even made the same mod and said it took him a few minute due to familiarity with bepinex!
It's pure greed, and it's an egregious greed, and it worsens by the minute as he goes on twitter and tells people "Well I would simply suggest not using it", even as he is blindly blocking people (including people who were praising him!) over it, and tells people "The devs don't think paid mods are a problem therefore there's no further discussion" (not an actual quote, but it's his stance), even as *thousands* of people are telling him "on the most basic level you can understand why it's in poor taste though? so maybe consider the will of the masses who are recognizing with ease how bad of a look this is?"
I don't think early access mods are a big deal! Stick within the community-agreed timeframe of "about 2 weeks" and don't do it for piddly little whatever mods, and you're golden! But obviously there was going to be AT LEAST SOME CONVERSATION over doing it for an EARLY ACCESS GAME THAT VOWS TO NEVER CHARGE YOU MONEY AGAIN versus doing it for a long-running huge huge huge title like the sims? OBVIOUSLY people were going to be raising some eyebrows?
