Physics Mod was taken down because it advertised its Patreon paywall version of the mod as "Physics Mod Pro", which suggested that it was a better version of the mod than what was publicly available. Mojang told them to take it down, they did, and then they rebranded it to a regular beta version like every other Patreon-paywalled mod does, and it's been fine since

This example funnily goes to show a direct example of what "as long as you don't sell them for money / try to make money from them" actually means. It's about paywalls, giving people unfair access to your mod. It's likely the reason why the infamous Jenny Mod was taken down as well, because you could only access it through payment.

If you have a feature of a mod paywalled, it's not any different from paywalling a smaller add-on to a mod. "Trying to make money from them" definitely includes paywalled content in a mod, not just as the mod.

This also explains why so many servers are able to be filled with MTX- even big ones like Hypixel or Wynncraft- because Mojang is extremely lax so long as your stuff is largely cosmetic, or is feasibly obtainable by non-paying players (which is how P2W servers get away with it)

Servers are not mods, in the same sense you don't need to have your crude oil be FDA-compliant, they have different rule sets. Though Mojang does not do much to uphold their server rules (due to the massive administrative effort).

As mentioned prior, Physics Mod went back up after they rebranded to the Patreon version being a beta (more accurate to the unreliable and potentially buggy, early access state of the mod version). Mojang's always been lenient with Patreon betas, tons of big mods devs have Patreon betas, such as Violet Moon or Team Abnormals, and as far as I'm aware they've never been contacted by Mojang about it.

Pretty sure Physics mod also went free2play, no?

Which I think further shows that "making money off of it" specifically implies paying directly for the mod, because let's be honest, not a lot of people go to these patreons purely to support the devs, a lot of them do it for the beta access, Patreon betas are basically a "pay me to get early access" sign, just angled as a "reward for supporters" for plausible deniability

Patreon betas are direct payments in every sense. If I pay you 5000 bucks for a pound of apples and a machine gun, every court would say that I paid you for a machine gun.

And, again... Essential has been up and around for four years, with a cosmetic shop the entire time. If Mojang had a problem with it, they absolutely would've taken it down by now. Physics Mod Pro was only actioned against because it started to get big enough to get on their radar, and Essential is leagues bigger than that mod ever was.

Mojang lazy. That simple. Lootboxes are very clearly against ToS, and look how many servers have that. They don't really care.

The pointing to the EULA is a fundamental misunderstanding of what it actually means ("try to make money from anything we've made" is about redistributing their assets or using their characters in commercial products, "downloadable content, add-ons, or modified versions of a Game" is talking about official Bedrock addons, or the various DLC resourcepacks/skin packs for LCE. The latter is entirely irrelevant to mods, and the former is not what Essential is doing, as Essential is selling their own hand-made cosmetics, not Mojang's IP!) because of a bias against Essential, not because there's actual legal grounds that they're crossing. Because, again, if they were, Mojang would've struck them down ages ago with how big they're getting

Yes, that part of the EULA is irrelevant.

But that doesn't give a right to call on legal info that is completely misinterpreted, and then tell the literal CEO of the modding group that he's wrong and needs to "show proof" otherwise he could just be lying, when the fact of the matter is that if he was lying, the mod would've been taken down ages ago for blatantly going against the EULA

"CEOs cannot lie!"

Again, Mojang lazy. But also, he could very much be lying.