How is it fair that when I read a story now to get customisation, wear the best clothes , kiss someone , to find,do,get VITAL information I now have to pay for it I mean it’s called GEMS but it is money ¬ just t GEMS anymore we are talking 8-15 minimum on EVERY chapter aswell now! Also I have seen a lot of this Bonus’s scenes for GEMS which just makes me think they have cut the chapter short so you have to pay to see it now & then there’s the whole if you spend 15 GEMS we will let you watch chapters 21,22 or you will have to wait 4 days for its release!! Since when has been holding chapters for ransom been ok?? This makes me so annoyed firstly as this game/APP is aimed at children & secondly because it’s down to the writers I have read in the terms & conditions (see photo)
Gems have become an integral part of ranking, getting into payments (which has gotten harder this year as well) and bonus payments. Episode is also a business, so their goal is to make money and profits and always will be… besides, I don’t think any of us want to see the platform go broke at the expense of us not paying gems because we don’t like them.
I think it’s pretty obvious that Episode is taking on board other methods used by other platforms since Early Access definitely isn’t something totally new and in-app purchases have always been a thing. It’s just that we aren’t as used to it on this platform because we’ve enjoyed free and upfront chapters from the beginning.
With that being said, I don’t doubt that some authors try to abuse the gem features, but most of them actually don’t and there are a lot of Early Access test features that we don’t like (the 11-hour-wait time is an example), but they’re tests, so we’ll see how they turn out.
Moved to Episode Fan Community. Make sure to check out our Forum Tutorial for more info about creating topics, and feel free to PM me if you’ve got questions. 
They should put a limit on Early Access I think. 
I get your frustration, I personally don’t plan on using any gem features on my story (which is comming out in less than a week) especially if I paid for an art scene just for probably no one of 5 people to see it, and bonus scenes, I won’t do that bc I’m not going to code a 100-200 line scene again, for no one too see it. It’s just a waste of my time, the only gem choices you will see, is authors support. Cause I personally don’t like being charged gems, so I won’t charge them