That kind of unification of competition within a niche is exactly the type of thing that i was supporting in my original message.
That's not at all what I was referring to. Many modpacks combine many trivially related mods. It's not as fun to play with 10 mods that all overhaul, say, caves, than 10 mods that each do different things.
That sounds like exactly what i'm referring to: unification of things within a niche.
[Video games a]re meant to entertain, not be useful.
That's not how i think of it. I would say the the usefulness of video games is that they're entertaining.
If doing things differently than other softwares makes them be more entertaining, then so be it.
Of course—the rules should be broken when it's beneficial for everyone.
(Also sorry for not replying to message #3874 earlier.)
What problems do[ modding APIs] create? (You probably already said it but it would be nice to have it all in one place)
Indeed i did, in #3822:
Modding APIs also bring downsides by being a complex subsystem of the project for the maintainers to deal with, taking away time that could be used to solve other problems in the software, and (in my experience) they often lead to fracturing of a community and too many options to choose from.