Imageshack: All your hotlinked images are dead unless you pay up

[Sushubh]

Dear ImageShack Users,

You are receiving this email because you have at least 50 or more images
in your ImageShack account. And have not used your ImageShack Account
for a while.

We wanted to appraise you of some changes at ImageShack that likely affected
your account.

If you are FREE ImageShack account user, your images will no longer work
on websites other than ImageShack - Best place for all of your image hosting and image sharing needs

In order for your images to work, if you have a free account, it must be
brought to "paid" status. We understand that some of you are not interested
in upgrading your accounts, in which case you can bulk download your images
by using our Skypath desktop application that can be downloaded for Mac
or Windows here: ImageShack - SkyPath

For those people who are still considering to upgrade, we are now offering
deeply discounted yearly subscription of only $18.99/year, that's less
than $2/month. To take advantage of this offer, and to bring your free
ImageShack account to "paid" status, please follow this link (while being
logged in to your account): ImageShack - Best place for all of your image hosting and image sharing needs

We are not planning to remove or delete any images from your
ImageShack - Best place for all of your image hosting and image sharing needs account, even if your account remains free until
January 31st, of 2016, so you have ample time to download your images.
After that date, your account will be considered abandoned, and your images
will be deleted.

Thank you,

ImageShack Team

I wonder how many images on the forum would die because of this.

 

[Nishant]

Pray imgur doesn't do something similar 😛

 

[dextermorgan]

19$/year is pretty cheap,no?

 

[Sushubh]

USD 19 is cheap if they are offering features that are worth paying. They are not. Hotlinking is not something that should be paid. Especially not after offering this feature for many many years. I can easily imagine millions of images on the web breaking because of this change.

I was a pro user of Imgur. And they removed those plans earlier this year. Showcases that if you provide a good service, you do not even need paid plans to stay profitable.