Donate $20 to help the Haitians, get $1481 in DriveThruRPG content…is something wrong with that?

As I posted on TeleRead today, DriveThruRPG is offering a coupon good for $1481 (in cover price) worth of (specific) RPGs in return for a $20 donation to Haiti. As I said in my post, "This is a chance to do some good for people in need—and even if you couldn’t care less about the plight of Haiti, the opportunity to get nearly $1500 worth of RPG e-books for $20 is worth seizing for its own sake."

And really, it is. There's some great stuff in there. The Serenity RPG (based on Joss Whedon's Firefly) normally costs $30 all by itself.

But one person over in the MobileRead discussion of the offer took offense at that. He (or she?) wrote:

If you want to make a donation to help the poor people of Haiti, then do so. There are many reputable, international aid agencies working there to choose from. To entice people, and connect this terrible tragedy with the offer of free books, or anything else is, I think, obscene.

I must admit I'm having a hard time seeing where this is coming from. What's wrong with the idea of getting people who would otherwise not be inclined to donate to help out by pushing their "greed" button? Is their money somehow dirty because they were "tricked" into giving it? Will it help the Haitian earthquake victims less than the money of people who donate for its own sake? (There was a 6.1 aftershock today, by the way.)

Certainly the strategy seems to be working. The person I originally found out about it from, an extreme conservative/libertarian type, actually says in the blog post where he writes about it, "Despite how I feel about giving money to the Haitians, I am never opposed to getting an extremely good deal on things that are wonderful to play with."

Donate $20 to help the Haitians, get $1481 in DriveThruRPG content…is something wrong with that?

As I posted on TeleRead today, DriveThruRPG is offering a coupon good for $1481 (in cover price) worth of (specific) RPGs in return for a $20 donation to Haiti. As I said in my post, "This is a chance to do some good for people in need—and even if you couldn’t care less about the plight of Haiti, the opportunity to get nearly $1500 worth of RPG e-books for $20 is worth seizing for its own sake."

And really, it is. There's some great stuff in there. The Serenity RPG (based on Joss Whedon's Firefly) normally costs $30 all by itself.

But one person over in the MobileRead discussion of the offer took offense at that. He (or she?) wrote:

If you want to make a donation to help the poor people of Haiti, then do so. There are many reputable, international aid agencies working there to choose from. To entice people, and connect this terrible tragedy with the offer of free books, or anything else is, I think, obscene.

I must admit I'm having a hard time seeing where this is coming from. What's wrong with the idea of getting people who would otherwise not be inclined to donate to help out by pushing their "greed" button? Is their money somehow dirty because they were "tricked" into giving it? Will it help the Haitian earthquake victims less than the money of people who donate for its own sake? (There was a 6.1 aftershock today, by the way.)

Certainly the strategy seems to be working. The person I originally found out about it from, an extreme conservative/libertarian type, actually says in the blog post where he writes about it, "Despite how I feel about giving money to the Haitians, I am never opposed to getting an extremely good deal on things that are wonderful to play with."