I'm just waiting to see Rome 2 and Attila mods go on sale. I'm like 90% positive since that company turned into a focus about making money at the expense of a developed game, they'll hop right on it. Since the Total War company releases so many DLC for useless re-skinned units (that mods can put in just as easily to be honest, which is actually why they really limited modding (its super hard to mod newer total wars compared to older) (but I'm sure they now want to make money at mods so...yeah), I'm sure they'd love a chance to jump on this money making scheme
Cities Skylines/Paradox pretty much said a BIG no...so you know what their stance is. They aren't in it for the money.
With that said. I'm glad there is other alternatives to the workshop. Nexus is a great place, and a much better place than workshop...I used the workshop for one single mod, and it was a mod that added a "dispel" spell as some of my spell effects from other mods would get "stuck" on my character.
Also, I've personally never pirated a game except once (and it was for GTA 4 as I actually didn't know if my PC would run it and didn't know if I'd like it. But then the game had a huge virus after running it, go figure rofl...)...but...yeah I'm not buying mods. I'll leave it there as I imagine you know what I mean
For skyrim, literally all it is, is either a esp+BSA or esp+textures/meshes. Anyone can copy the files anywhere rofl