I buy the $14.99 unlimited reading on all stories, no ads, 70 free gems a month VIP Amethyst package so I don’t have to deal with it anymore thankfully- guess if Episode is getting money from you somehow they’re happy 
but when I did I obviously didn’t like it because it’s basically a ‘spend money on gems or wait 30 days and 30 nights to save up on free gems or wait 30 days and 30 nights for the hours to pass until you can read again’ option and it’s even worse on longer stories (stories with 40-50 or more chapters) because it’d pop up every 2-4 chapters so it’d get INSANELY expensive if you did it every time until you finished the story and for me it’d make me drop the story entirely because it wasn’t enjoyable- when I find a story I like and am in the mood to read i’ll binge it in one sitting until i’m done so I wasn’t able to do that plus I have a bad memory so by the time the 11-24 hour hold was up and I could read again i’d completely forget what even happened in the last chapters.
I get that Episode has to make money but in my opinion I feel like it’s only hurting them and more importantly hurting the authors because instead of it getting them gems it’ll just make them lose readers cause we’ll get annoyed and will just stop reading.
Got me thinking tho- since my VIP package let’s me bypass having to pay to read more I wonder if authors still get gems from me 