Please correct me if I'm mistaken in any way, because maybe all the information I got was outdated? If that's the case, then maybe everything is different now? If so, I'll probably grab this since it's on sale right now.

.
Quite a few games in the series.

Steam has its workshop but noone forces modders to use that. The modder who do that are locking away the mods from a lot of people so it is like they add DRM to their mods... You must not play our mod unless you are online and bought the game in this one shop muahahaha.

Do not make super long titles, please. Part of your question was cut off.