Hellgate London - Buy bling, get beta

Continuing that fine gaming tradition of offering beta places for $$, you can grab a place in Hellgate: London's testing in return for buying one of their WETA statue thingies.
More information.

I zipped over to the weta site just to take a look, and I am still having chest pains.

Is it just me, or does $200.00 to buy a little statue and play a beta of a game that when finshed will cost around $50. seem a bit illogical?

Is it really that much different from dropping a wad of cash on e-bay to buy a before-street-date copy of Bioshock?

We're talking some serious geek cred here — getting the play the game before anyone else.

Unless, of course, the NDA prevents you from even mentioning that you're in the beta…

At least that's a finished game, though the day hasn't dawned where $157.00 would fly out of my pocket personally for the first pre-patch release of any game.

But I don't have a lot of geek peers to impress around my place either. The dogs are pretty oblivious to that kind of thing. (They would probably enjoy chewing on the statue,though…)