If anything Valve, and bethesda, are also the only one that have already attempted to a paid mod future
Paradox have been using his platform for years now, there are thousands of mods available for all of their game so if they wanted to they could have already started some kind of subscription
Paradox is shitty and all but yeah, lets not start a witch hunt on nothing
I actually didn't realize they already had mods on it since I bypass the launcher, but that's interesting.
It would be a (very) small amount of people impacted but I could see some creators limiting what they put up for free and continuing to work with Paradox to make Content Creator Packs. ASFAIK those packs largely used assets the creators had already made available on the workshop, but I could be wrong on that.
Even so, the amount of people that use those free workshop assets and then don't buy the CCP is probably minuscule, and this is all hypothetical as we don't really know what the approach to C:S2 will be outside of knowing it's still gonna have plenty of DLC.
Going on that tangent, I know people tend to demonize the DLC style of Paradox, Sims, et all but I know I did the math on Sims (one of the biggest DLC games ever) and buying LITERALLY everything (which almost no one would do), at full price, for the time Sims 4 has been out, amounted to being cheaper than playing WoW for the same time period. C:S1 with all DLC is way cheaper than that and the DLC goes on sale all the time, I have all of the non-music ones and I think I spent less than $100 total on DLC + game over the 8 years it has been out.
Lots of games have shitty monetization and one could certainly argue that MMOs like WoW are not worth their cost either, but I vastly prefer the C:S1 DLC "scheme" where I can pick and choose (if I want to) what I actually care about and get meaningful updates for free to boot. Beats the hell out of a subscription, or buying premium currency, or loot boxes / gacha, or just an abandoned game.
Again though, I would love if Valve would develop a way for developers to utilize parts of Steam (multiplayer, workshop, chat / screenshots even) outside of Steam, but I don't think I've ever even heard a hint of a rumor that was something that was on the table. Given the increasingly cross-platform nature of modern games, I don't think implementing cross-platform tools is the wrong choice for devs. It's probably easier for them, and strictly speaking it's probably more fair for the players. PC is still going to have and edge for C:S2 in the long run almost certainly for performance reasons, but it's nice the console players aren't just being left in the dust again.
Edit:
TheTrain just to be clear none of this is directed at you, just bouncing off your post