December 18, 2009 by sharky
Official news from HDBits now confirms that a recent announcement for a 24-hour open-invite slated for this Monday has been shelved for the time being, if not indefinitely. Certainly this is bad news for those on the outside looking in, but as a whole, the HDBits community is supportive of the decision. So, what caused the rollback of the invites? Simply for the exact same reason that the invitation system was disabled exactly one year ago to this day - invite sellers trying to make a quick buck.
In contrast to what one asshat posted in the original article, HDBits.org did not opt to shut down invites on the 17th, as seen in this fake screenshot below.
However, it may have been a premonition to how things went along, as these undisclosed sites are offering HDBits invites for sale - as high as $50 USD each.
(The shot above reflects "Out of Stock" although this was at "4 available" just yesterday) on an undisclosed site. Seems they’ve updated the news.
HDBits on eBay? Current attempts to find HDBits invites on eBay were nil, no matter how searches were conducted. Old listings for HDBits on eBay suggest prices as high as $150 each.
Torrent Forum Requests:
Requests are busy on forums; people were quickly filling up slots and/or reserving their invite ticket (mostly through private PM).
But not all torrent forums are cool with just requests….
Last Notes:
HDBits, don’t blame blogs or torrent forums for exposing this info originally, and thus unintentionally promoting a new-found interest in sales of HDBits invites. The news was published on your index page, and thus it spread like wildfire - what did you expect? Take a lesson from other trackers — what HDBits needs to do is to incorporate a pay2invite system (SCC; ScT-RIP) - this is the only way you’ll be able to control the number of invites being sent out, while at the same time generating revenue to keep this great tracker well-monetized. You’ll have more donators than you can keep up with, while trimming out most invite sellers. Problem solved.
HDBits, what’s it gonna be? You’re in the spotlight, and you want new members. There’s been a years’ worth of private tracker peeps that have never had an option to get in. For all we care, keep it closed. For all the great members you could have coming in, it’s your loss.
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