While I'm not a CG apologist, I think the word "expensive" was meant more in a resource allocation and development context rather than a financial one.
They have a team that has a finite number of hours in a day to get things done, and simply adding more people to the team doesn't linearly scale the amount of work they can do. There are also limitations to the existing code base that might preclude adding certain features without requiring a complete rewrite.
I don't think CG Tophat controls the purse strings, so he's almost certainly speaking from the perspective that it will take too many hours away from team members and whatever it is (packs?) they are currently working on.
For all we know the people doing the Q&A ask for resources to implement the game features we request, but someone in upper management is simply telling them no because the game is making money and they don't see value in investing in it. While I'm very disappointed with the direction this game has gone, raging at the Q&A people may be shooting the messenger.
