Oh it's indeed fishy to its very core. If it weren't such a tragedy for the Skyrim community, I'd be delighted by all this juicy gossip.

Money is clearly a big motivation. Otherwise they would have gone the OpenMW/TES3MP route and become open source and charge nothing for testing out beta releases.

But OK fine - they wanted money, of course they did. Everybody wants money.

Their mistake is using code they were forbidden from using and then charging players to test their mod.

You can ask for donations. That's fine, justifiable even, for all the work you put in.

But the Skyrim Together team isn't asking for donations, no. They are making you pay in order to test the mod. That's a different story.

And then factor in the stolen code, which means they are earning money using something they are forbidden from using?

Yikes. Not good.