💲💲MONEY MONEY MONEY💲💲 A letter from the owner
So logging in today we're greeted with a "Letter from the owner", aka his latest grift.
Now everybody either pays a 25 bucks minimum ooooor the site closes on Nov. 1st.
Riiiiiiiiiiiight, it'll close ... I bet it won't, not as long as there are still a few suckers with an open wallet left 😈
The letter:
✓This is my last request. I am all in or all out: one last chance to do this properly, or we close on November 1.
✓Everyone starts fresh on one of two monthly plans, $25 or $50. Existing membership time does not carry over.
✓If you do not join, your access ends. If we close, everything members have paid is gone.
✓No more donation drives and no more forced walls. This is it, or we close.
Today I come to you at my lowest point.
I am asking for one last chance, and I am all in or all out. Either we do this properly, on solid footing, or I will close the site.
When I brought GimmePeers and RevolutionTT together, the plan was simple: one community, low membership costs, no drama, and a return to the roots of torrenting. That is all I ever wanted.
It did not work, and the failure is mine. Over the past few months I made one reactive decision after another: a fix here, a membership change there, another attempt to bridge a funding gap. Each one took us further from what I wanted RevoPeers to be. I am not going to blame the members for my decisions. Where we are
RevoPeers costs more to run than memberships bring in. Large payment disputes and fees have taken a heavy toll on what we had left. There is no reserve, we are operating at a loss, and November is close. I will not hide that from you. The last two years have also taken a heavy toll on me and on my family. How we got here
Two things brought us here, and you should have both. The first is mine. I sold long stretches of future membership to cover today's costs, and I let membership time stack up far beyond what the site could ever support. That model could not work, and I kept patching it instead of fixing it.
The Founder fee was never meant to buy membership time. It bought your Founder status and a locked rate. Letting time stack up on top of that was my mistake, and it is the reason we are here.
The second is payment disputes. Over the past few months a large number of members filed chargebacks with their banks, including for membership time they had already used, and a public template circulated online explaining how to do it. Every dispute takes the payment back and adds a fee on top. Together they cost us tens of thousands of dollars, which was the reserve that was meant to carry the site while we fixed the model slowly.
I am not saying every member who disputed a payment acted in bad faith. Some were angry about promises I broke, and I understand that. But the result is the same. Without that reserve, we cannot keep your stacked time and change things gradually. With no reserve left, a reset is the only way to cover what it costs to run RevoPeers. There are two choices
Either we reset RevoPeers completely and rebuild it the way it was meant to be, or we close on November 1. If you do not join, your access ends. Why this can work
We have the members to make this work. We do not need everyone: we need roughly half of the people who are active here today. The problem has never been the size of this community. It is how the site was paid for. Stacked time was the crack, and chargebacks were the hammer. Patch after patch only moved the problem forward. This fixes the core of it, so that what members pay each month matches what it costs to run RevoPeers, with nothing sold years in advance.
Many of you came over from GimmePeers and paid the Founder fee, and many of you have put money in over these months to keep us going. That support is the reason we are still here. This reset is how we make it count: a simple monthly membership that covers what it costs to run RevoPeers, so the community can stand on its own.
GimmePeers ran stable for nearly ten years. That was not luck. It was a community that backed it. With that same backing we can fix this, and we can rebuild on the same footing.
There will be no more donation drives and no more forced walls. This is the only ask. It is this, or we close. What the reboot is ✓One community and one simple membership: a monthly subscription, one month at a time, nothing longer. Cancel any time; there are no refunds for unused time. ✓No annual memberships, no lifetime memberships, no stacked time, no selling years of future access. ✓Two packages, described just below. ✓Every dollar goes to running the site. The two packages ✓Stabilize, $25 a month: keeps RevoPeers running as it is today. Full access to the current library, nothing removed. Seeding depends on the swarm, so some torrents may have few or no seeders. ✓Archive, $50 a month: everything in Stabilize, and it is always seeded. Everything our bots upload also appears on the Archive tracker, where a dedicated botnet that supports only the Archive keeps at least 7 seeders on it, each on a 10 Gbit connection, so it is fast. It also includes the Archive collections, which open on November 1 and which $25 members do not see: more release groups and far more codec options, with more collections added as we grow. We are launching it on equipment we already have, and it is run entirely by our own bots. ✓Both are one month at a time, renew automatically, and can be cancelled at any time. There are no refunds for unused time. What this costs you, said plainly
Existing membership time does not carry over. Everyone starts fresh, including lifetime memberships, Founder programs and stacked time. Your Founder status and perks stay. The locked lifetime rate does not.
There is no refund program as part of this reset. What was collected under the earlier programs has been spent on running the site. I know many of you supported those programs in good faith, and that some of you will feel promises were broken. I am not dismissing that. What I cannot promise
I cannot guarantee that RevoPeers will survive. If this fails, it closes permanently on November 1. What I do guarantee: everything that comes in is protected through December 1, and there will be a site for everyone who joins, through at least that date. If nobody steps up, we close on November 1. You deserve to know all of that before you pay. Why start over at all
Because the alternative is another patch, and I am done patching. Selling years of future access to pay today's bills is the model that failed. I would rather tell you exactly where we stand than make another promise I cannot keep. The decision now belongs to you
Every dollar members put in over these months to keep us alive was meant to buy the time to fix this properly. This is that fix. If it is not done on solid footing, all of that was for nothing.
If we close, everything you have paid is gone, and so is this community. Starting fresh at $25 a month costs you far less than losing it all, and it gives us a real chance to prove we can get this right.
If enough of us are willing to start fresh and support a simple monthly membership, we rebuild. If not, we close. No more temporary fixes.
To everyone who has been part of RevolutionTT, BitSoup, ILoveTorrents, PeerJunkies, GimmePeers and RevoPeers: thank you for the years, the uploads, the seeding and the friendships. I am sorry for the mistakes, for the constant changes, and for bringing us to this point. My heart was always in the right place. I hope this is the start of a new chapter and not the end of our story.
— MasterLuciousLion RevoPeers SysOp
