They opted for the safest approach: Don't bring them up/advertise them/stream use them heavily etc (and a lot of those were just involved with raiding/pvp, though the PvP ones REALLY need to be neutered if they haven't already).

As to the free labour nonsense: Same could be said of people who make fan games, art, stories, videos. . . Creatives will always find outlets and participate in things they like, I'll be worried if they design things with the thought process that people have mods installed already so build around that, since then the argument now applies to benefiting from other people's donated labour.