From May 14 to May 17, even those putrid, free-loading Silver Xbox Live subscribers will be able to get in on the Halo: Reach beta, Bungie throwing open the gates to both classes for a weekend of jetpack festivities. There is a catch, of course: you still need to have a copy of Halo: ODST on-hand. But so long as you can scrounge up one of those, you'll be good to go, even if you're an Xbox 360 owner who plays Halo online and...doesn't already have an Xbox Live Gold account. Source: Halo: Reach Beta Goes "Free", Has Over 1 Million Players - Haloreach - Kotaku
I redeemed one of the 1 month gold sub's i've had laying around to play it, i shall be a full time gold member again soon anyway
Some webshops here were able to import a massive amount of 12 month codes from the UK, then sold for €32 instead of €60. So the financial crisis was a good time for me to boost my gold membership a bit..