I can believe the majority of the people who still play Skyrim does so because of mods. I do doubt however that most of the people who've bought Skyrim did so with the intention to use mods? I played through vanilla on release and haven't picked it up again since then. I'm guessing alot of people did the same?
Just guessing mind, I don't have the numbers to back my claims. And the numbers regarding mod downloads Aerth mentioned are certainly impressive. What I would like to know is the percentage of Skyrim owners across all platforms that use mods.
There's no way to know, but I suspect that a LOT of Skyrim players never used a mod in their life - or only lightly dabbled with them.
People tend to forget that consoles dominate in this area - and it was only recently console gamers got the chance to even use them.
If you go to howlongtobeat.com - you can see MANY console gamers who played Skyrim and other TES games for many hundreds of hours - which would be without mods.
Yes, people are STILL playing Skyrim on consoles without mods.
There's a monumental difference between consoles and PCs when it comes to mods and modding traditions.
Once again, the Watch excels at forgetting they don't represent the norm. Modding is NOT a common mainstream activity, especially not on consoles. It's something for the "advanced user" in most cases.
My own personal best-guess would be that around 60% of TES fans (Morrowind -> Skyrim) never used a mod, or only used very few.
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As for rjshare using this:
They're a business, not a non-profit organization, and they need to make a profit so they can stay in business and make more games.
As an argument to support mod monetization - is, logically, the same as saying they need to monetize mods because they need to make a profit.
Conclusively, they need to monetize mods.
Which is of course a fallacy - which I'm trying to point out, and - as such - the argument is irrational.