@tonedef: the “some of your money that you wouldn’t otherwise have ever handed out” probably wound up being less than a dollar per copy, and you still expected support. This is not a good thing for developers.
Nobody’s being coerced into anything here, so you can make your own decisions; just make sure you know what a raw deal this is for the developers, and that the promoters are making out like bandits, so that you can make an informed decision to participate or not.