The second annual MacHeist event is coming to a close today in four hours. At the time of this writing, nearly $1,960,000 has been made (over $450,000 of which will be going to charity) through over 40,000 sales of this year’s software bundle. For only $49, everyone who got in on the offer had the chance to buy 14 great Mac applications that had a combined retail value of $499.

A mega-deal like that is just too sick nasty ill for anyone to turn down.

During last year’s MacHeist I managed to stand firm and resist the temptation to financially take advantage of the Mac developers involved. Afterall, I know in my heart what their products are worth and it certainly wasn’t what their split of my small fee would have amounted to. It felt like I had won the battle against economic tyranny.

But this year I lost the war…

I completely caved this year and bought the bundle. It’s not that I’m a cheapskate. If anything I’m the antithesis of a cheapskate. It was just impossible to resist some of the applications MacHeist had this year.

This whole MacHeist thing is practically criminal. I still feel dirty and it’s been over 24 hours since I bought the bundle. Let’s look at the top four applications really quick. Just selling a combination of any two of these applications for $49 would have made MacHeist the steal of the year.

Vector Designer (Retail: $69.95) is a lightweight vector graphics program. It’s kind of like a cost-effective Adobe Illustrator. It also just won a “Best of Show” Award at Macworld.

Snapz Pro X (Retail: $69.00) would have come in handy this summer when we were tossing around the idea of making screencasts for Fore Score.

Pixelmator (Retail: $59.00) is another product that kind of competes with an Adobe program. This time it’s Photoshop. Pixelmator was the one program on the list that I was actually anticipating buying at full price very soon. I’m tired of Photoshop running like hot garbage on my Macbook.

CSSEdit (Retail: $29.95) probably needs no introduction for any web developers out there. I’m actually embarrassed to admit that I didn’t own this already.

That’s just the first four programs on the list. There are ten more Mac applications that you get to go along with those. For instance, TaskPaper is something I can’t wait to try and integrate into my daily work routine. Again, all 14 of these programs only cost me $49.

What’s the big problem?

I have a hunch that the 14 developers aren’t getting an even cut of the nearly $1,500,000 made by this promotion. I know that last year’s developer share was not pretty but maybe this time around things are different. One can only hope.

The problem is that in the long run each of these developers will probably see negative results from their involvement in MacHeist. In the short term they’re gaining new customers, excellent exposure and they’re helping raise money for charity. I understand that. That’s great.

But what happens when these new MacHeist customers come calling for tech support? Each of these applications just received over 40,000 new potential support emails. Could you imagine that? How do you justify thoroughly handling any and all requests from MacHeist customers when, in the back of your head, you know they only each paid a few dollars for your product? Wouldn’t you feel ripped off and abused a bit?

I have a value I put on my time. And I’m sure these developers do as well. I just hope they didn’t miscalculate the price they’ll have to pay for being involved in this promotion.