I think it's a great idea: immortalize a dude who was so important to them and put him in the game. Monolith obviously got this part right. If the game's great, this'll be even more awesome for Forgey to be tied to this in such a way, as such a NPC that's a helping bad-ass.
What stinks is: all the messy stuff surrounding this all.
It sucks that Forgey Family only is getting $3.50 of the $5, since Steam is taking their cut. It would be nice if Steam ponied-up the other $1.50 per DLC sale.
Would be cool if say International sales of the DLC went to the Forgey Family - so that stinks too, that it likely won't be.
Selling Forgey as DLC, makes it easy for WB to figure out "Okay, this DLC here - $3.50 from these sales are going to Forgey's Family" than say doing the math of "Okay, we sold X copies of SoW at $60 MSRP - so, X amount of this $60 sale goes to Forgey's Family."
But, I think most consumers might feel: "WB is already getting my usual MSRP $60, I don't wanna spend another $5 for a Day-1 DLC."
Some consumers might even feel, "If Forgey is so important, why isn't he already a part of the base-game automatically and already?"
Other consumers might do the usual, "I'll wait until GOTY Edition with everything is out" - since this game looks to be loaded with all kinds of $-DLC Practices, Micro-transactions in a SP-game, and things of that sort."
Maybe WB should've just sold SoW base for $54.99 MSRP and the DLC for $4.99. There's the usual $60 MSRP tag if they buy both - so gamers that like to pre-order, buy Day 1, buy Week 1, or whatever might say, "Ah, $60 is the usual amount I drop on a new title, I can buy the DLC."
If people really want to support Forgey Family, best option might be just to send $ via their own personal Donation Page.
EDIT:
It's probably more down to carelessness/laziness than malice/greed, but the situation would seem to demand a little more care than WB have provided to date, and there hasn't been any response to any of the criticism that I've seen. Hopefully they work something out for the purchases that aren't eligible for donations, as the idea itself seems good.
WB has a crummy track record on business practices, of late - especially on the PC side. MK9 came out very late to PC; MKX was ported horribly out-the-gate; MKX didn't get ALL DLC's and MKXL Edition until way later on PC; horrible technical port for Batman AK on PC; Batman AO was a mess upon release w/ bugs & performance issues; all of the Shadow of War SP Micro-transactions non-sense; WB with how their treat Youtubers & critics by not giving them early copies of games unless they adhere to their contract rules (don't show glitches, issues, praise the game, etc); etc etc - so, no matter WB's intentions, just like EA, they're just going to get called-out ASAP on something like this.
this guy's family, let's keep all that sweet Illinois money for ourselves".
