I took a couple year break from episode. I randomly decided to go on the app and check out the new community stories and most of the trending stories now barely hit 1 million. Before there were authors dominating with multi million reads like up to a 100 million. What happened? What did I miss?
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Moved to Episode Fan Community since this is about Episode stories. 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. 
I’ve been reading since around 2017… and I can honestly say that I’ve never seen any single story with 100 million reads.
But the community definitely seems a lot smaller than it used to be. Plus, personally I think it’s great that stories with a few million reads aren’t always constantly occupying all of the trending spots. This way it gives lesser known authors and their stories and/or new stories a chance to shine. 
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that gangster story by miss mj i think?
It’s nearly there, at 89 Million!
But that’s literally the only story on Episode that I’ve seen get anywhere near 100 million.
I definitely get what you mean, a lot of the older popular stories got many, many more reads than the current popular ones.
My Episode Lover got 44.3 million, Chain Reaction got 89.2 million, The New Girl got 40.1 million and today’s popular ones get around 1 million to 3 million or so, generally speaking anyways. I guess as Rayna said, the community has gotten smaller.
Apparently the forums used to be much more lively than it is now (I wasn’t around on the forums back then, I was only on ig) but I guess other things have contributed too: gems are more important now and a lot of readers have left because of it. New users are forced to read a lot of Original stories before they can access community ones so that could’ve also contributed to a lot of people leaving. I think some people also left after Ivy was shut down and decided to write for other apps that allow for more mature content. A lot of writers have simply grown up too in the sense that they have more responsibilities apart from school now and have moved on from Episode. Just a bunch of reasons I suppose.
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wait ivy app became available to the public and got shut down?? 
Tbh it seems like everything Episode related has died down 
The forums are pretty much dead, a lot of community authors have left, a lot of community stories have been discontinued abandoned or not updated in a long time, Episode’s gem ranking system pushes community authors who aren’t bringin it lots of gems and reads to the background makin them hard to find, lots of community authors sold their stories to Episode and write only Official stories now, the Episode app homepage is pretty much overrun with nothing but Official stories and really popular community authors and you really gotta look hard to find lesser known stories and authors, due to the gem ranking system community stories have gem choices in them now some just as bad as Official stories, etc.
I started usin Episode almost two years ago and it’s for sure gone downhill since then IMO 
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Ha. Yeah, it became available to specific countries though (or maybe just Australia?) but shortly after it was shut down which was a shame imo.
They just didn’t utilize it well enough I think because there were only horny romance and bdsm stories on it, there wasn’t any mature drama, thriller, horror, etc.
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I was one who was almost driven away should I know what lies behind the 40-episode barrier for new readers back in late 2019.
I spent all my hard earned gems just to obtain an outfit that didn’t even make it into screen time for more than 15 minutes. And its branch is just a couple pretentious compliments with no real soul behind it: it’s a complete mockery of my gems and time. Since then I’ve devoted to community stories and featured story is just a means to catch up to the potential art releases (and cringe time).
The ban system of Episode is not even harsh at this point, it’s just straight up confusing. Some authors who crossed the guidelines would receive a warning, whereas others would have a ban pasted right on their face. And if you look into the stated offences… They aren’t visibly different. Doesn’t help that they’re keeping their mouth shut regarding the reasoning behind it… But it’s their job, I won’t interfere.
Okay, so linking back to the topic: it’s due to a geometrical shape called readers-are-gon. Seriously, the community is shrinking even for a 3 year apprentice like me. I’ve seen authors getting banned (of extreme example: one of the characters in this author’s story called out someone for being gay, and… That got the author banned) for reasonable reasons, and some… Well, weird reasons?
Idk honestly. Even though they have the responsibility to take care of the well being of the community, I believe this can be too extreme.
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