Gonna quote good ol’ Mac for reference purposes:
As of now, our plan is this:
Custom player models:
will be automatically downloaded for you (you do not need to be subscribed before hand)
This is all subject to change, but this has been our plans internally for months now.
TLDR: If you don’t want the game to download playermodels automatically, you can manually sub to those you want to see in-game, no official partnerships required.