Do mods not work on a pirated copy?

i just finished doing ng+ on vanilla and thought to try out another playthrough with mods. so i installed a few (won't list all of them but i only have 9 mods) and for some reason only the mods that don't need the "mods" tab work like QoL and visual mods. and i can't even find the "mods" tab in game or in the menu. did i mess up somewhere in the modding process or does it just not work on pirated copies of the game?