Surely 'paid for' IL2 expansion games unless sanctioned by 1C (&/or TD) are illegal?
Although I understand (no disrespect is meant, but humour is needed) poorer areas adapting to more capitalistic methods and possibly to keep their mod/expamsion specific servers running in said countries.
While more of the gaming population mods for free, are those expansions having to pay for access to state files & trips to museums & archives (and associated 'expenses' - smokes, beer, dirty mags, postage etc), or because they do not include free community mods, addons A/C etc - and so have to make their own stuff of which is so much better than stock or free?
I suppose I'm more worried about them using the free communities products as a part of their own stuff and claiming costs for it all from there unknowledgable users/supporters. Do they pay a percentage to artists/modders who have been selected from the free community?
Then again, if you don't buy, you don't know what bits they might have selected from the many many options from the free community.
Personally as you should be able to tell, I am initially against for 'paid for' community expansions - even if theres little difference between 'official' expansions which I have paid for on different games.