Get your facts straight kid. Go do some bloody research and quit white knighting.
Fact: CEO of SNAIL, their PARENT company, in an interview a few weeks back before the yearly earnings call, stated, unequivocally that WC was developing a mod system for players to "create content in game to then sell and Snail would take a cut of those profits."
Fact: ASE didn't survive due to mods. Many of us played on Official and Unofficial servers. Dudes in my tribe played both official and unofficial, at the same time. And the unofficial server they played on? Only 4 mods that were to literally only made QOL changes. I have people on MY unofficial ASA server that played throughout ASE and never touched unofficial, and they know people... Blah, blah, blah. You're wrong. Stop white knighting.
Fact: they weren't forced to release early by Marbis (Nitrado's parent company). Snail signed a bad deal because they didn't pay server bills and because they needed money to finish development. They could have released later, but then Marbis would keep all the profits from server rentals until the loan was paid off. There was no forcing here. These were the terms and they accepted them. Marbis didn't force them to do it. Marbis didn't hold them at gun point to make them sign the bad deal they signed. It was all CHOICE. Chose not to pay server fees. Chose to sign a bad deal. Chose to release when they did so they could make money off servers.
The kind of mods they are trying to push, the player created content, like the skins, not the stuff on CurseForge, it's all a way to start generating money. Creating another avenue of microtransactions on top of the other microtransactions they're peddling out to us, like this floating island dino base thing. It's content locked behind a paywall and they don't want to make all of it, they want your fellow players to make it, and then sell it, so they can take a cut without having done any work. It's scummy.
All of this info is out there man. Just do the legwork. But, ya know, if you're too lazy to do it, or don't know how to do it, go check YouTube. There are plenty of reputable YouTubers that cover this stuff.
So, yes, they are a joke, and now you are too.