I don’t know where are you getting the “have always been … and have always been paid for with donations” thing from.
IMHO, its a “recent” thing, folks were doing mods/indie games without getting paid before Patreon/ko-fi/etc. existed. I remember the times when ModDB and IndieDB were popular and so many games in there were completely free. Then Steam Greenlight happened and now everything is early access paid game. Also game demos died.
About the mod slop, its already happening for example in the Minecraft modding, they’re filled (mod listing pages and even some mods themselves) with ads, paid access or forcing you to join the discord.
I don’t know where are you getting the “have always been … and have always been paid for with donations” thing from.
IMHO, its a “recent” thing, folks were doing mods/indie games without getting paid before Patreon/ko-fi/etc. existed. I remember the times when ModDB and IndieDB were popular and so many games in there were completely free. Then Steam Greenlight happened and now everything is early access paid game. Also game demos died.
About the mod slop, its already happening for example in the Minecraft modding, they’re filled (mod listing pages and even some mods themselves) with ads, paid access or forcing you to join the discord.
Donations are donations, though.
If you’re coming across mods locked behind donations, they’re not donations. Perhaps this is your confusion.
If you want to reference the old days, you should no doubt remember old PayPal buttons in kod descs.
Content locked behind Patreon is not accessed with donation. It’s literal purchase.
A small check for moral consistency: what about Loseless Scaling and 3DSen?