qidian seriously needs to change their business model otherwise they will will end up disappearing from international webnovel business. It’s hard to understand their reasoning as they started strong. First everything was free, then they added ss stones with releasing one episode per day for free readers which I believe still allowed qidian to grow their customer number. And now the latest episode, no unlocking unless you earn ss stone.
It feels like qidian doesn’t have any non-Chinese person as decision maker in the company. They either don’t know or completerely ignore how international marketing work, how they grow, how they make money. Facebook, google, amazon, netflix, all have free service and/or monthly or yearly subscriptions. Make customers pay small amount or nothing to get service but make customers happy. And companies who tries to suck money from customers without any moral regard are bound to stay small or disappear. As is, Qidian will only give back the customer they received to other competitors which eventually will become much bigger/better compared to this site.