UPDATE: New Statement on Modding Rules

I agree that players should not use CC or mods from sketchy creators and should generally not involve themselves with those creators at all. For me, it's not difficult at all to just stay away from that. I love CC and mods, but the game can be played without them. If I'm aware of someone misbehaving, I just won't use their stuff. Players also should be naturally careful about what information they're giving to strangers and what they're downloading to their computers from strangers.

Unfortunately they absolutely have to be now, and it's terrible because CC creators shouldn't be abusing their supporters/patrons or sending them dodgy files. No matter how much someone annoyed me or broke my personal ToU or whatever, I'd never think to track them or send them viruses. A level of carefulness downloading anything online is necessary, but in these cases I'm not going to blame the customer for bad practice on behalf of a CC creator. If you're making custom content, paid or otherwise, don't put trackers in them or viruses and such. As for 'going careful what information they're giving to strangers', as any kind of seller you have a responsibility to protect your 'customers' ' information as much as you are able. In fact Patreon's community guidelines outright speaks out against doxxing.

The problem for EA, though, is that I think it's just too late to have a blanket no monetization policy that's easy to enforce. I want EA to put its money and resources into the game and not into messing with content creators (unless those creators are doing something obscene/horrifically illegal).

This is my problem, though- it's the horrific and obscene behaviour, and the further such behaviour that I think a lack of 'control' on the situation will breed within the community. Many discussions I've seen on this subject are a case of the money; Whilst this isn't something you've implied, and this isn't aimed at you at all and is just furthering my point- a lot of folk have brushed it all off with a 'well if you don't like it don't pay for it.' Honestly if this was solely about making money and the potential greed that can result, I'd be angry? but less angry. Unfortunately I've seen the damage this has done to the community, and I fear that no baseline standard for Early Access will lead to more permanent paywalling- and the trouble is where it will likely go from there. More permanent paywalling will lead to more toxicity within the community, I have little doubt.

This is the last point I'm making on the situation because I don't want to violate forum rules or anything, nor do I want people think I'm being argumentative... but until a firm stance on Early Access is taken (going back to the 2-3 week wait would be fine, IMO) then I am stepping away from the community and not buying any more packs personally.