Feng_Sha Ugh, I rarely come here anymore so only seeing this now. $25 isn't a whale amount of money, the whales are paying [much] more than that. The point was that $25 was too high a price for what the service provided - compared to the rest of the industry.
By setting the price at $25, the whales got more for less, the premium users wouldn't see much of a benefit, and since the free users are unwilling to spend anything to begin with, such a high price wouldn't convince them. It was a loss-loss-loss price point.
It's sad that they've gotten rid of the subscription altogether. I imagine a lot more people would prefer to spend $5 a month on a webnovel sub than use aggregator sites. And I'd bet anything that the user base for those sites is much higher than webnovel's.
If they could fix their app too, that'd be great. I mean, wtf is that battery drain about?