Just to add to your point: I wonder how many copies of Arma 2 were sold explicitly because of the DayZ mod. How many copies of Half-life were sold because of Counter Strike? Warcraft 3 and Dota? I could go on.
Developers should be ecstatic that modders want to build off their game as a platform. It can only bring them additional money as people buy their game for access to hugely popular mod. I can understand the desire to monetize this, but too much and you freeze out your modders and you get nothing.
This is what's always driven me mad about the battlefield series. There's were some great mods springing up and I wish it was capitalized on and encouraged.
I feel like Arma 2 saw the Project Reality demographic and said "Lets go for that"
Absolutely right! Think how differently it would be if we had to pay $50 for Half-Life and another $10-15 for the counter-strike mod. Everyone would lose.
It's pretty darn hard to make a derivative work without understanding the source material. I suspect your immediate dismissal of this analogy is more related to your strong personal greed for entertainment, which appears to be a fundamental human feature.
One wonders how that could have evolved. Someone should do experiments where they deny access to three company episodes to chimps, to see if they freak out as badly as the internet generation does when they can't get their favorite things.
Developers should be ecstatic that modders want to build off their game as a platform. It can only bring them additional money as people buy their game for access to hugely popular mod. I can understand the desire to monetize this, but too much and you freeze out your modders and you get nothing.