Lordyken They will make more money with the privilege scam than they would by increasing the already outrageous prices for SS.
As for the elite membership system, it was NOT too good of a deal for readers. It was the ideal solution. It made more contenr available to the readers and allowed them to start gifting their free SS to their favorite authors. This in turn increased the authors revenue. It was only the poor stories (or poorly translated) ones that saw a decrease in revenue. This was good as it encouraged quality.
However, the memberships allowed WN to see how desirable their product was and thus they dropped the system in order to make more money themselves. A single "whale" is more profitable than 100+ normal customers.