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No one is forcing people to buy anything
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An interesting point to note is that a mod called SkyUI is going to have its next version released as a paid update. SkyUI is a mod which a huge number of other mods have dependencies on in one way or another. In this sense, there’s a possibility that mods which others rely upon to work in this way could effectively force people to buy them if they want to continue to run mods.
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I really don't see what the fuss is.
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The fuss is in the long-term implications. What if the majority of mods do become paid, what if the companies involved continue to take such a large split of the money, what if in the future games are built so only paid mods can even be installed? This could result in huge shifts for an ecosystem where money has never been involved before.
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Bethesda is being more generous than they need to be by accepting only half of the profits made on their IP. That said, it may be exactly as generous as they need to be to be able to make anything off of it at all, since modders have to be encouraged to change their hobby model into a side business model.
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Bear in mind that Bethesda is not the intellectual owner of any of the content created for mods, and that the have already made a profit from every copy of Skyrim that people are now using to both make and play mods. And any income Bethesda makes from this comes at zero cost to them, as they didn’t have to do anything for it.