I don't care for the fonts myself, but it's really cool to see more industries try out the pay-what-you-want model. It's starting to become large in gaming especially, and I really hope it does well. Lately everything seems to be going towards "micropayments", and that really scares me.
It seems unlikely that products with limited audiences, high associated value, and high price points are going to end up "pay-what-you-want" models. I'm sure lots of people will end up releasing typefaces this way, but it'll mostly be as a means to audition for foundries.
For me it's because they're so often used in an exploitative way. I'll use gaming again as my example. Look at Farmville, or what seems like the majority of mobile games lately. It's so common to see "Pay $2 for mojo points" or whatever their pretend currency may be, and used to sell virtual items. Now that in itself isn't evil, but these items are often things to make the game less "grindy", and so developers are encouraged to add grind in the first place to maximize profit. The developer isn't focusing on making the best possible experience for the player anymore.
That's true mostly with Farmville (buy a tractor to double your harvest speed), but other games take this on as well too. Another example: Companies want to sell over-priced map packs and such, and so will stop the modding communities from creating their own content. If there aren't user submitted maps the company can sell their own for far more.
I used games as an example because it's the easiest for me to come up with examples, but I think this extends into other mediums as well. To me, micropayments change the focus of the publisher of that medium to look for profit where they didn't before, and that creates a worse product.
This is a very loose idea I've had in my head for a while and I haven't put it all together like this before, I'm certainly not an expert on business models or anything like that. This post is purely conjecture on my part.
Well, I feel you on the not-liking-abusive-games thing. But I don't think that's a mark against micropayments per se. I mean, that would be like saying that most criminals deal in cash, so cash is evil (which, by the way, is an argument I've actually heard before.)
Don't throw the baby (micropayments) out with the bathwater (abusive games).
I too wouldn't mind to see how this model works for the author of the font, but that's not what a linked page is about. The font itself is of a little notability. It is not an example of a fine type design to put it mildly, nor is is notable due to its designer. Yes, it's hosted on subtlepatterns, but that's about all that makes it different from a truck load of similar free fonts available from dafont and fontsquirrel.
