If the initiative was to raise money for Pixel, or to hire him as a developer so that he wouldn't need his main job, it could have been a different story, but there's this middleman who wants their share of the pie without contributing anything of worth. In any case I'm not ordering people around; I vote with my wallet, and the vote is 'no'.
Unfortunately, people who honestly believe they're supporting Pixel by buying Nicalis's endless rehashes only pave way for more rehashes. Because the model itself is unproductive and made for a different purpose altogether. Which is, again, profiting from an established name. Which is the current trend for pretty much anything, because making new stuff that is good, surprisingly, takes effort. So why make that effort when you already have the work cut out for you?
Some people don't seem to understand the importance of cultural artifacts. When something, no matter if it's free or commercial by nature, crosses a certain threshold of popularity and public acclaim, it becomes an item of culture, and object of importance that starts living a life of its own, regardless of the author's wishes, or yours for that matter. We saw this when the fanbase became making mods and free conversions of the original CS to different systems, fully preserving what made it unique, its identity. It went much farther than Pixel intended, and it's a good thing.
A good example from the commercial world would be Star Wars. It became so big and universally loved it didn't need change. Lucas didn't understand that either, and started introducing changes that were not only minor and cosmetic—something that is generally welcome, even if not expressly required—but also contentious, ones that break the established flow, implant personality traits that weren't there, and just don't make any sense (like putting Hayden Christensen at the end of RotJ, even though Luke's character would never recognize his father in that creepy looking young fellow). Well, at least Spielberg
has woken up somewhat.
In other words, when you're taking an established work and start rehashing it for money, marketing it as new and improved, you're spreading it thin; you're destroying parts that made it a unique cultural artifact, instead making it one with rest of the cookie-cutter crap. What makes it worse, that way you're hampering or even preventing
further dissemination.
With regards to "it's my property, I do what I want" comment, I recommend watching
this video. It should become obvious that giving fans what
they want is more important and profitable than giving fans what
you want to give them.
