To be honest, I’ve known about Episode for quite awhile. I downloaded the app a long time ago and decided to play. Except, I got super frustrated with the Gem choices. It’s always like “HERE’S THIS SUPER EXCITING OPTION WITH GREAT OUTCOME BUT NOW YOU NEED TO PAY MONEY”. I don’t pay for things like this, I mean ever. I’m a gamer far outside of mobile games. As in I mean when I pay for a game I get to keep it forever, it’s one price, and it’s not “Pay to win”. It’s just the complete game and hours upon hours of fun for one set price (which I’ve agreed to pay and think is worth my money).
So every initial story I read when I first got the app was like this.
“Get in car with X guy and fall in love” [20 Gems]
“Reject him and never see him again” [Free]
Every single initial story I chose was something like that so I just was like “Not interested” and I deleted the app. Years pass and I find out you can just sign up for an account and learn to write your own stories which is super fun because I’m a writer. Mostly of original stories (I’m on places like inkitt where I have like 5 “books” published) so I thought “what an interesting way to tell my stories” and signed up. Now I’m finding that the app is forcing me to read a ridiculous amount of these featured/gem stories just to get past that into the actual library. I mean I don’t want to read these stories it’s not why I started in the first place. I want to read the community stories, the stories that other people (like on here) are writing. I want that. I refuse to pay money to unlock anything with these featured stories but I have to spend days clicking to get through chapters just to unlock the entire library.
I suppose everyone here has already done this (or paid money) and for the record if you want to pay money for this app then I got no problem with that (people can spend money on what they want) but…this nickle and dime tactic of nearly forcing me to pay just to unlock the rest of the library is really getting on my nerves. A little warning that even if I wrote for Episode this would be the case would have been nice. Anyway, sorry for the rant.
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Did you have an old Episode account? You can log in there and get back the library
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How many featured stories do you have to read in order to actually get to the library??
Never got into the library the first time cause I was too annoyed by this GEM choice thing so I didn’t think it was worth my time.
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You have to read like 18 chapters total (so you don’t have to read entire stories just chapters). However you have to have passes to do that. So basically I can read like 2-3 chapters in one setting then I have to wait 4 hours then I get one pass. It’s extremely tedious just to get into the full library and it honestly feels like them trying to extort money out of people (just my opinion).
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This is what you have to do in the beginning. Those are a lot of chapters before you can read the full library, if I am being honest🤦♀️
oh wow.
I used to have episode myself then deleted it. I was planning to get it again so I could read some of the stories ppl have told me were really good but this makes me not even want to download it if I have to read dumb featured stories with dumb gem choices.
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Wow.
I don’t want to do that. Hopefully I remember my old episode log in so I can skip all of the extra reading with featured stories becauseee I really don’t want to read them. I find featured stories overrated there is community stories better than most of the featured stories.
I don’t mean to offend anyone btw 
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Yeah, well I think of it the same way. I mean all those gems to get a good outcome, I never spend gems so I don’t read them. And the original ones are mostly without gems and longer
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Yeah now it seems it’s hard to find a good featured story that’s actually worth reading.
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Some of the featured stories aren’t BAD like the one I chose at random isn’t terrible (not super great either) but if you want to do anything fun at all it’s like you have to keep using GEM choices. At least give me ONE interesting option below the Gem choice like
Super awesome Gem choice
Lesser awesome free choice
Reject both choices
Instead it’s like
“GO ON SUPER EXCITING ROMANTIC DATE”
“REJECT CRUSH AND HE WILL NOW HATE YOU”
Like WTF who would even want to keep reading if this is what keeps happening and you have literally no in between?
Exactlyyyy.
Likeeee for one choice it would be like 25 gems…just for a:
Wear a super cute dress (25 gems)
Wear something that looks like trash threw it up (free)
like whattttt.
Guess imma look like trash.
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Unfortunately if you didn’t have a profile before they started this new unlocking thing then you’re going to have to keep doing it until they give you full access
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OMG the way you wrote this I’m laughing so hard ha ha well done!
It’s really irritating I agree I feel so bad for you 
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It’s not like I don’t have time to do this I just wish I didn’t have to do it lol I’m certainly not paying to do it either so I’ll just keep checking in every few days to continue until it’s unlocked I guess 
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but fr episode has some problems. They got enough money why they need more?
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Yeah it’s not fair and it’s a waste of time. It’s irritating bc they never had this before and now new readers have to go through all this like 
Just pure bull
tbh we all went through it… it’s a crap rule though. But you can’t blame episode for wanting to make money though. And all the community stories are most likely gem free; by some point you’ll be able to get 4 passes at the time and do challenges and streaks to gain passes and gems. :))
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Hello @KSullivan, this is Sydney the moderator. Welcome to the forum! 
I’ve moved this thread to Episode Fan Community since it’s not about story creation. 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. 
