Has Episode Reached it's Peak in Terms of Popularity?

That could be true. But that’s my point. Kids lie all the time! Maybe they can have parental controls on the actual app for parents so they can block stories out. I mean kids have access to a lot of things these days. It’s hard for parents to actually control which apps and websites their kids are monitoring and accessing. Either way the mature app would still gear kids to it because everyone wants to read forbidden things for their age group. It’s more exciting.

But I still don’t see how a mature app and their regular app would work together. I think most authors would go to their mature app because they won’t be restricted as much as there.

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The point of two apps is most likely so they remain within the iOS and Google Playstore guidelines. +17 is the highest age rating an app can get in a store.

It’s also so that they have no liability if someone under 17 downloads and uses this mature app. It wasn’t meant for that age anyway, why are they downloading it? But having +17 content on an app that is +12 violates Apple & Google guidelines. They are protecting themselves from liability as a company by creating two apps.

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Yes. This is one of my biggest issues with the app when it comes to communication! The opened ended answers they provide only cause more confusion or questions to arise! :weary:

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Nah, no worries. The more we discuss it … maybe the more they’ll see it. Wishful thinking though. Nothing seems to ever change on here.

That’s a crap ton of work just to read community stories on an app. Ugh. Disappointing.

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Interesting. I guess that makes sense. I was thinking they could actually change the age group on the app though. They could technically ask you what’s your age when you redownload the app to make sure you’re above the age group so they can be safe from that.

YouTube does that with specific videos they age restrict although I’m sure people younger then that watch it.

I’m curious to see the news on this mature app though.

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I wasn’t as active in 2018, what happened?

W*ttpad has mature stories and non mature stories on their app and they do just fine. Making a separate app just seems like extra work for no reason And yes i know they are rated 17+ in the App Store whereas episode is rated 12+

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I’m a fairly new author in this community since I joined 2 years ago when I uploaded my first story to the platform and a year later, that story got featured to my surprise. Now, I am a very active member in terms of speaking out constantly when an author or Episode does stupid things because I’m just that type of person. When I first joined, there wasn’t as much drama, everything was fine with the guidelines and no one really complained. I started to see the shift when the racist attacks started in 2018 and it started to show the true colors of authors and Episode in how they handle things. How a business works is through communication with the authors that bring the revenue to the app, but as far as I can tell, they don’t do that at all, only if they want to feature your story or partner with you so you can sell your story to them. I wanted to write for this app because I have so many ideas for stories that can be visually shown, but not in the state the Episode community is in because I had to change so many things of my stories that made it unique in my perspective. Having a month to change everything didn’t help because I have school (college) and my stories are very long (4000-5500 lines EACH CHAPTER) and that’s for 6 stories of mine with 5+ chapters. How the hell was i supposed to get it done by the deadline? It’s why once I finish my stories and release one more story, maybe 2, I’m done with Episode unless they get their crap together.

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It definitely is, if they are so worried about the app being for 13+ then they need to do work on featured stories. Because so far the featured stories still are inappropriate for that age group. I believe in the end they will realize they shot themselves in the foot and it will be too late.

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I think after seeing a lot of my favorite authors announce that they were leaving within the last few weeks I echo many of you in saying that Episode is going down in quality and popularity. Obviously it is 100% the authors choice to leave and I truly do not blame them because the lack of communication, care the company has from them and support (especially in terms of the racism in the community) could’ve been avoided if they actually cared about their readers and this community.

Someone mentioned that they got too comfy at the top and they really did. I just wonder how much of this could’ve been avoided if they just communicated and cared.

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Honestly it really is sad to see things had to go this way. As an author myself I can say how amazing it is as writer to see your stories and ideas come to life an different way. To be able to turn your stories into a game and make it interactive if you like is something that many apps don’t have. So I know that the decision for authors to leave isn’t made lightly. As a user author myself I plan to finish the stories I started. As for new ones I want to work on them but will hold off until this review mess is handled. But at the same time it’s a mess because episodes decide that a month was enough time for authors to fix stories when they have to know it really isn’t. They know people have lives outside of the app so it was crazy idea to do things that way.

And yes the racism was bad and it’s sad episodes didn’t handle it properly. The issues with popular authors using there fans to bully others. A lot of things got swept and a lot of people are just over episodes at this point. And I agree you can’t blame people for getting fed up and leaving the app.

At the end of the day episodes makes us have to all hit 500,000 reads to enter writer payments. But from the moment we make a story any reader who doesn’t have a pass, will see ads to read our stories. They make money off us from that moment and honestly even that seems ridiculous at this point. I love to write and I won’t ever stop but I do think my time as an episode author will come to an end sooner then I thought. It’s becoming less fun.

And to make matters worse with all this episode is still being a hypocrite. They are forcing us to change our stories and limit what we can write and how we can write it. But featured stories are still breaking guidelines. And featured stories have always been able to do so. And doing things that way is what started all this mess to begin with. And from what I have seen from authors who are leaving , that is the thing that frustrates them the most.

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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.

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If anyone didn’t see the rule, here it is.

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Not to mention some people don’t like romance as a genre. Say I can’t transfer my data and like to read a fantasy community story from my last account. NOPE! Here’s a cheesy romcom instead. Just… no!

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Same, I don’t like romance stories either!

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At least I can have some fun with the custom names. Hurmph, Plonk and Zoooooooooooooooooooooop can have some adventures.

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Omg yes, I spent forever trying to make all of the guys look like the joker and making the same-sex love interests look identical!

Some improvements I would like to see from the team is getting rid of having to read 20 featured episodes to play the game, make user stories more visible and make it easier for small authors to get noticed, In my opinion i don’t think they should make the mature app, they should just make this app 17 plus because the new app will make audiences transfer there, they should make the episode original stories have more substance and less about romance with different types of Mc’s (Ex. Older,) and they should stop letting every good choice cost gems in the episode original stories. Okay that’s all i can think of right now :triumph:

bump :woman_shrugging: