@GunEye @Expopower @Apastron In this context, I don't feel this makes sense. Since Cam noted that it was a good thing that nostalgia "eleviates" sadness, I would imagine that he meant it lessens it (alleviates), not increases it (elevates) - since the latter is certainly not a positive effect.
Something else to note is his pronunciation of "eleviates", which parallels that of "alleviates" rather than "elevates".
In a purely written form without context though, I'm sure your interpretation would be perfectly valid.
@Rizer Hm, I think they marked the goal as complete because they're using combined totals for KS and PayPal donations. At last update, $115000 was recorded for PayPal, pushing total funding above $3.3 million. Next-gen stretch goal has been achieved!
@alleverCertainly, I would agree that donating all revenue acquired from the DLC sales to the Red Cross would be better than what EA is currently doing, praiseworthy even.
However, I don't see it as unreasonable (as in, complaint-worthy) for EA to attempt to recoup their development costs. At the very least, their action is an ethically neutral one - they are effectively selling the buyer DLC for $2, and requiring a donation of $8 to the Red Cross.
(And just as a note, EA did indicate on their SimCity site that the 20% is to go towards "recouping our development costs", which means that they're performing a zero-profit operation here; the revenue they retain is being used to pay for costs incurred by the DLC production.)
I'm not sure why people are assuming EA is making a profit off of this DLC. They're giving 80% of the player's payment, which is revenue, to the Red Cross - that means the money they keep will still need to go to covering development and distribution costs before any profit can actually be gained. And this percentage to the Red Cross could end up being higher, in light of their self-set minimum donation of $100 000.
Even charitable organizations (of which EA certainly is not one) need to cover costs for their administrative expenses before they can use their available funds for humanitarian projects.
I'm not a huge fan of EA myself, and you can complain about their business practices, their distribution platform, their management of developers - but there seems to be little reason in complaining about this.
Expopower's comments