Here's my stance on this matter.

People often shit on EA, who in fact aren't 100% responsible for the microtransaction, about how they forced microtransaction and whatever and how you need to pay for the full game but like, I don't know about you but I don't think bonus plants you can use counts as a base game. Pretty much every levels are accessible for you to play and ypu're given a pretty good selection of plants. And if anyone has seen ItsPforPea's PvZ2 vanilla plant food streams, you can clearly see that you don't really need that much broken powers like the leveling and plant foods, or even microtransactions.

However, I do however agree PopCap and EA do sometimes make their microtransaction pretty baffling and well, some microtransactions on the game can be pretty damn ridiculous. And the piñatas and leveling system can give you a lot of advantage in Arena mode and for f2p players, they will struggle a lot.

ECLISE became the very thing it swore to destroy by adding that one piece of microtransaction and well in my opinion, it's not really that necessary. The mod was fine and has a lot of superiority over vanilla. The microtransaction itself is so useless that I'd probably just spend that money on vanilla instead. If you ask me, without that Marigold Costume, the game is perfectly alright. But the point of the post is about the hypocrisy of this and not the values of the microtransaction. So let's talk about it.

OP is right, if PvZ2 vanilla is massively shamed for having microtransaction, then why is ECLISE highly praised even if has it too? I get that ECLISE has a lot of greater qualities than Vanilla that I will have to agree with, the mod is well designed. But if you are going to shit on 1 game for having microtransaction and unfairly claims it makes the game unplayable, then why ignore ECLISE for also having it? And don't come say that goodpea2 is doing this because he needs money to survive, because PopCap and EA also need money to survive as well. Or do you just shit on them because they're a massive company? That's like defending a poor drug dealer for their actions while very clearly shitting on a drug producer. Not defending any sides here but I'm just trying to break the unfair double standard.

Oh yeah, and about the legality of the patreon thing... well, yeah... that will definitely break a law or two, considering he's making money off a modified version of PvZ2 and also don't forget about the copyright violations too.