Webnovel.Forum

BlueBurning "... forever unlocked since it was paid by our subscription."

I'm not a fan of some of Webnovel's business practices myself, yet this just seems silly!

You paid for access to read; not for the novels themselves, right?! Would you cancel a Netflix subscription and still expect access to the stuff you already watched to be available after no longer being subscribed? Not for one moment would I ever expect Webnovel's subscription to work how you seem to think it should.

Anotest But Netflix is a whole different ball-game. They have a subscription only (afaik) system, whereas Webnovel has discontinued the premium membership. It's like if you were playing a subscription-based MMORPG, but suddenly the devs cancel the subscription model and ask you to pay to access each individual mission in the endgame. What mharjric wants is something similar to the SW:TOR model, where one month of subscription unlocks all DLCs that were available when you subscribed (here, the chapters you have read). And, as we've seen with EA, it is a completely viable business model.

Goroo "Netflix is a whole different ball-game"

It really isn't. As a reader you don't own anything on Webnovel. What you're purchasing here is access to it as a service. That may be individual chapters, where there are no time constraints over future access (you get it as long as Webnovel can provide it); or we have the removed subscription model, which operates on much larger (relatively) payments upfront to give you access over a fixed duration of time - you lose out on pseudo-ownership in favour of gaining full access with that caveat that it's on a time-limited basis. There is no such thing as 'ownership', and it's also no different for Netflix, WoW, Spotify, EA Origin, etc. All of those are subscription services that provide access, not ownership. Run out of time; it all stops!

"It's like if you were playing a game that was initially pay-to-access, which then went on to offer a subscription-based MMORPG model on top, but suddenly the devs cancel the subscription model and ask you to pay to access each individual mission in the endgame, so the only option would be going back to paying for the individual parts of the endgame you want access to instead of blanket access to everything. Regardless, in both cases you never owned the game content itself, merely the right to use it; so if you cancel your subscription you will no longer have access, as would be expected"

There's nothing extraordinary about what you described. If it happened the other way around on the other hand (ie. pay-to-access went subscription only), then there'd be problems; morally, ethically, and probably legally - that isn't what has happened though.

"What mharjric wants is something similar to the SW:TOR model, where one month of subscription unlocks all DLCs that were available when you subscribed"

... and if you cancel your subscription no more playing the game with the original access, right? It becomes restricted in some form again to meet their f2p model.