Modding and mapping were what made CS great in my opinion. Since CS:GO, Valve has been quietly killing that scene by making it harder and harder for people to find these game modes.
But to be honest, I think it's an artifact of our (or at least my) generation. I've played CS for thousands of hours, same with l4d and cod2/4, and I don't _need_ a battle pass, seasons, constant updates etc. Though when chatting with my ~14 year younger cousin about this some months ago, he said it'd be "boring to play a game that doesn't get updates". So.. different times :)
Mostly AA and indie game titles. The simulator scene is still going strong with dedicated servers (like squad, arma, farming simulator, the hunter etc etc).
Larger titles swapped over to more control in order to extract more money from the players, but also control the experience.
There is however some AAA titles every now and then which support hosting your own servers. But they're quite few these days
Mostly non-AAA studio games. Then there's plenty of games with steam workshop or nexusmods support, even easier to mod these days as they use Unity or Unreal and you don't have to rely on an homegrown SDK release.
These days? Not many. I’m sure there are some but probably one of the most popular that I’m aware of is Minecraft. There are quite a few custom server implementations alongside the official Java one.
Quietly? They monopolized the modding community. There is a universe where gamers could sell their weapon skins, but now only Valve sells their own skins. They killed modders.
Actually that's a really good point on the skins aspect. But I think the community might be in a better shape if the dedicated servers were easier to find.
I don't think it's just "different times" as you put it. Those kids have had their brains ruined by companies' profit-maximization schemes. It makes me really angry (at these companies) and sad (for the kids) that they have been the victims of such a thing. Every generation before them could just enjoy things without needing endless novelty and updates, but they have apparently been robbed of that.
But to be honest, I think it's an artifact of our (or at least my) generation. I've played CS for thousands of hours, same with l4d and cod2/4, and I don't _need_ a battle pass, seasons, constant updates etc. Though when chatting with my ~14 year younger cousin about this some months ago, he said it'd be "boring to play a game that doesn't get updates". So.. different times :)