In an interview with IGN, Starfield DLSS modder PureDark defends the decision to put his advanced DLSS mods on Patreon, and he plants his flag in the debate over paid mods.
Paying customers are footing the bill for that anti-theft
The guy is making over $500k off someone else's product with a couple days' work. I'm no Tankie, but you don't have to be a high schooler or a pothead to have a problem with capitalism's more toxic extremes. People have been conditioned to forget this, but piracy is a counter-leverage to prevent product pricing from going out of control. Just look at the average prices of Switch games vs PC games. The harder it is to pirate a product, the further the price of that product is from a value consensus.
These types of anti-thefts tend to false-fire for the paying customers (who footed the bill). This is especially true because he builds his mods against a closed-source product that behaves in ways he cannot always predict. Published modding interfaces are never perfect.
The real value of the "product" was done by (m/b)illion dollar investments by Nvidia and game companies facilitating support for FSR or alternate upscalers. His "product" takes a few days to implement and others are able to offer the same "product" for free.
He is making a ridiculous amount of money considering the amount of work required and feels like an insult to modders who actually spend hundreds of hours tinkering and publishing their work for free. He already makes more than he deserves on patreon, why is he so sensitive about others pirating it.