2011 account, checking in, OP is not wrong.
It's not just that an update breaks all mods, but that updates are DEMANDED, to the order of magnitude of mandatory.
If you happen to log in "online" to your gaming service (I use Steam) It will auto-update, there is no way to stop it unless you immediately go to check if there is an update scheduled for each game you own, and manually stop it, every time you log in.
Of course "everybody" has unlimited broadband internet... NOT! But nobody cares about the "have nots".
This is typical of the insanity of the modern world, putting your toaster oven on the internet, so you can check to see if your toast is burning from the next room. Internet of things, Trans-humanist insanity of our modern world.
Now you have everything hooked to a fragile internet just to make the world work, and one little EMP/virus and the whole thing collapses.
http://www.empcommission.org/
90% dead within a year if the grid crashes, and it is set up to crash.
Coincidence?
Depopulation agenda?
I guess it's asking too much to have a game that doesn't demand 50gb/month maintenance, when your geosynchronous satellite only allows 20gb/month.
But Pluck the people living in rural areas, growing food for the city folk, nobody cares about the 10% of the population who keep the 90% alive, so the 90% with good internet can hunt for meat (not with a bow, but in the frozen section).