What does this and ‘no making your own mods’ even do for the hypothetical? I’m pretty sure most people aren’t going to solo-dev (m)any additional top-10-worthy games that they’d also consistently enjoy. Maybe for some (simple) classics, but at that point I say so what?

Even accomplished solo-devs lose motivation (also constant reminder of room for improvement is sort of its own curse), if anything I’d say paying for mods to be created probably a less of a patient-gamers thing (and probably more exploitable).