Did you bought a starving third-worlder time ? My company charges 73 €/h for my time, 500 € would literally barely be enough for half a day. And I'm just a regular, mediocre dev in a regular non-IT-focused company.
I didn't put out job ads or anything. Literally was working on a mod by myself when a skilled modder pitched in to help with questions and it shifted to me offering him commission to do the leg work for me. I've also commissioned artists to create models for me before I picked up some Blender skills myself. The mod market is not saturated with 200k/yr devs who are looking for a second job. It's no different than artists doing artwork commissions. Some ask for more than others.
And people here are super entitled. How dare someone make a mod for a commission/donations/money. The nerve! You'll never be able to get free mods again!
The language choice people are going with to paint how detestable they find the concept as a paid mod is all too telling of their simple-minded deduction. It's actually basic economics and really simple logic. You want a product. That product does not exist in the world. There is no one making that product. You can try to make that product yourself. You either don't have the time, tools, skills, or desire. What you do have is money. You have now created demand where there is no supply. You find someone who can supply. They now have demand and can provide supply for money. That product now exists. In a world where that product was already made before you asked for it, you don't have to pay for it.
It's almost like we live in a system where someone's labor can be traded for someone else's labor through paper notes backed by a central banking system that ensures person a's labor is worth person b's labor. Where there is no demand or supply for either of those, then a and b can decide on that between themselves.
What those of you who disparage the concept are doing is coming along and saying "stupid enabler" as person c. Person c sees a very basic free market concept taking place and becomes frustrated because somehow they reserve entitlement to person b's potential labor. Not actual labor. Potential. Person c lives in a world where person b was somehow not going to exist without person a, yet person b was going to - without existing - fill person c's needs without person c having the need to begin with.
Thus is childish notion of "my god, someone got paid so this dooms the free mod market."
Brb, going to tell my lawnmower guy he is supposed to mow lawns for free because his time isn't really that valuable to someone, somewhere, who is really peeved that people pay lawnmowers because it's a really simple skill that just requires time and effort that the person paying for the service would rather spend on other pursuits in their life.
Partake in it or not, I'm losing no sleep over having a tailor-made mod commissioned taking away from your share of the pie that doesn't exist. Your guys' logic is literally "he's paying for someone to not make mods for us."