I feel like Episode has changed for the well the worse, it has reached its peak and now is slowly dying, no, more like decaying. I do admit that they did gave us a survey on what we wanted, I felt like there was some communication but really wasn’t much. There’s a lot of things that they did that it’s starting to make themselves go south. It’s sad to see that they are driving very talented authors off their app because they are restricting their creativity and it makes them search for new apps. I’m happy for some authors that were contacted by other writing apps. Authors have already found better platforms to showcase their work or were contacted by these platforms.
In their Demi Lovato/Mean Girls/Dolan Twins era. That was when their featured stories were different and exciting for new readers. They were great for new readers’ attention but now since they’ve been making lots of strange decisions and as well that some of their stories are breaking guidelines on Episode.
I do wish Episode was more communicative with us authors better than being vague, their communication and organization has been very poor. All their communication, like with the new guidelines have been cloak & dagger. They really never explained why that they settled the new guidelines or anything. I personally want to believe Episode is making a mature app geared towards adults, it’ll give those who write mature stories more breathing room. But they should’ve announced it before setting the new guidelines.
They really never did anything with Racism & Bullying.
When POC authors were being racially profiled, they literally asked Episode for their help but Episode decides to sweep it under the rug and told them to “suck it up”. They claimed they couldn’t do anything but backtracked.
I do believe that some drama between authors also caused a rift of hurt in the community too, not just episode.
An author, I follow, was part of a “fuck that person” movement and was getting death threats from another author’s fans along with other episode author’s fans well. Those authors were adding fuel to the fire of the “Fuck That Person” movement. Excusing S for telling W to kill themselves, then comforting the author that called W out. Pretty contradicting that they were, because they attacked someone then called to the rest of their fans for positivity after they fueled the flames themselves and bullied someone. Which is so wrong on so many levels! It disgusts me that popular authors are using their fans to bully others and them bullying as well.
It took them months to say something about the bullying/racism in the community. But they hardly didn’t do anything. That’s why authors are frustrated with Episode, because they wanted them to say something but it took them months to respond and basically back-tracked themselves when they said they couldn’t do anything. They could’ve, they could’ve quickly announced that they wouldn’t tolerate any racism/bullying to their authors but they didn’t.
Overall, the community doesn’t feel like the same community it was even from last year. Many authors are writing posts about the mistreatment and poor communication with the Episode team which is forcing more authors to leave and venture out to find new places to express their work or being contacted by another writing app that actually is very good with communication and respect their authors. Unlike Episode, which lacked all those things.