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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.
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Actually they own anything built using their property, which includes anything designed to work with their game. Actually most end-user agreements legally forbid the extraction and modification of game assets (without which it would be extremely difficult for them to protect their IP). They allow mods anyway, but this cuts very close to legal problems for them, because copyright can only be legally enforced if the owners take steps to protect it. This means that if you don't sue and/or send cease or desist letters in every instance of breach of copyright then you set a precedent that will prevent you from making such efforts in the future. Allowing the modding community to mod their games is a liberty they allow for good customer relations and as a matter of practicality, but if someone was to profit from mods without their permission they absolutely would have to crack down on it or their copyright would become legally unenforceable and anyone could profit from their IP while they are left out of the loop. Essentially, for-profit piracy of their product would become legal.