There are many lazy companies that work on mobile games. Simply starting a mobile game doesn’t mean you’re not lazy. It’s about how much you work and how you inforce your practices.
They could be sitting in the office and working really slowly for no reason except that they don’t want to work hard. That would be laziness.
How are we even paying Episode by watching ads? Do you mean fans or something?
Watching an ad gives episode money. They earn money per ad that is viewed.
Well, I have a different perspective on this: I think they give me a software to write on, and they give it for free.
They give you software to write on… and then make money from that.
If it were generosity, they wouldn’t make us watch 2-3 ads per chapter. They’d be letting us qualify for writers payments sooner.
We are their consumer. Without us, they make no money. Without them, we find another app.
There are plenty of nonprofit apps out there. Episode is not one of them.
*of which there are plenty
Exactly. They didn’t create this app out of the goodness of their heart.
They let us write stories so that they can sit back and do less work. They don’t even have to write stories. We do it for them and they still make money from the ads. Especially considering a very small proportion of writers actually qualify for the payments.
So if they want to make money from us, they should really be pumping out assets for us to make better stories to get more reads to give them more free money.
Episode are basically saying:
“Write me a story! I’ll make money from it, but you probably won’t. Still… I’ll update your stuff to write stories every week… maybe. But don’t be negative. That’s not fair on me”
I wonder how quickly they would spill out all of the premade assets they’re deliberately holding back (like the hair in the OP) if we were to start leaving?
Probably pretty quick
They’d have 3 months of stuff… tomorrow.
This is basically like saying
“They’re giving me the opportunity to make them money for free. Aren’t they so nice?”
I go back to my previous comment. Don’t step up if you can’t deliver. If Episode can’t take the minor criticism and some idiots on the forums making fun of them like people are implying, they shouldn’t be in the market at all
I think a lot of people don’t realize this. Even if you’re in the Writers Payment Program, you’re still making Episode earn money. So its not equal as well even if you’re being paid. 
Unless they didn’t have two weeks worth of assets to release to us at this time? We honestly don’t know what assets they have and what they are working on. We are very quick to judge based on what we have rather than what we don’t have. Looking at the forums and assuming that they are working on the things we have been suggesting, I’m guessing that they aren’t just working on hairs and clothes. There’s also animations, and possibly even body types as they’ve mentioned it before. These weekly updates might not even be their first priority as they would rather work on getting those done first before releasing barely-finished assets to us.
But then again, WE DON’T KNOW!
Frankly the most annoying thing is that there is a massive communication divide.
As for the money debate, I’ve never paid episode anything from my own pocket. I’ll gladly watch an ad or two before reading a story. It’s only 30 seconds of my time and I gain access to the episode community and an interactive, visual, storytelling platform that I enjoy writing on. If I didn’t enjoy it, I wouldn’t be on it. I don’t write for money, I write because it’s fun and I like the episode community that comes with it. If episode making money off the platform that they had every right to create is a problem, then what else are they going to do? Like you said before, there are plenty of other non-profit apps to write on.
I like episode. I like its platform. The fact that they make money off people using their platform? Not that surprising.
Exactly. And then writers get criticised if they have to hold back a chapter to wait for an update. Episode doesn’t get criticised for drip feeding diverse character stuff from us.
Episode is a company. They can take cricicism. If they didn’t, it would be a dictatorship.
It doesn’t really bother me. I enjoy writing and if there is at least one person who enjoys reading my stuff, I’m happy and I don’t care who is making money from this.
Lets not forget gem choices. They added it for community authors to use but how is ANYONE going to buy a 15 gems choice?! If they really cared, they would keep it 5. Episode is giving you things but its also taking things, dear Episodians.
So you write because it’s fun and don’t expect any of the money for the work you’ve given them for free.
Also, we don’t know what they’ve got coming out… but we do know that after two weeks, they didn’t give us assets that would have even taken them 1 week to make and debug.
Exactly. Even if you’ve got gem choices, you won’t mske that money unless you’ve had 100,000 reads…
And they don’t even help you get there when you’re the source of their income.