It's sad that this is necessary. And given that it took less than a week for modders to get actual performance gains means that bethesda could've easily done it themselves.
Don't think Bethesda is focused on making their gaming look specifically bad just to make it run on older hardware. Similar to all other companies there is a minimum spec. I do think that having such great mod support allows for this to happen which is great.
They are sabotaging their own sales by not doing it. Starfield is such a hyped game that many people who don't usually game much will want to play it and those people tend to not have the most up-to-date hardware. The PC I built in 2018 for about 1100€ is pretty much exactly the minimum spec for starfield. And given that minimum specs usually target 30fps for some reason, I'd need this mod if I wanted to play it at a reasonable framerate.
No, you're not. I have a 3080Ti and get anything between 20 and 45 fps in 1440p, lowering the graphics options doesn't do jack shit either. 12700k, 32GB 3600 MHz DDR4, Game installed on a m.2 980 SSD.
Do you lie about your fps to feel better about buying it ?
This seems like pure speculation. The relative number of people below this spec is probably not worth it for them to focus on this. Besides their explicit support for modding allows them to improved sales value. Consider for example Skyrim. It was re-released so many times and people kept buying it and mods allowed it to look great even years after its release. I think by narrowing their scope they can focus on development of a good core and by leveraging their mod community it can run on older or higher hardware. Win win in my opinion.