Kurotsuki no Yaergnacht - Vol. 1 Ch. 3 - Seriousness And Murderous Intent!

[GalladeGuy]

Many forms of timed releases and contextual/temporary paywalls are still permitted, AFAIK (though going anywhere extreme with that is playing with fire, ofc). Multiple scanlators whose stuff I follow consistently pre-release their chapters on their own sites, for example. One thing many groups like this get blammed for is (even effectively) only posting some of your releases here as advertising for another site as a "the first one is free" kind of scheme. That one runs afoul of more than one rule (5.2.22 majorly included) for a pretty good reason. The only ones exempt from that are publishers, pretty much and for obvious, unfortunate reasons.

Simply put: This is a place for hosting releases, not adverts. People should only use it if they actually intend to use it.

Search "paywall" in the support channel on Discord. The mods are pretty clear that paywalling banned, where paywalling is defined as having a chapter available for purchase before it is uploaded on MangaDex, for any length of time and for any reason. From what I can tell, this was an unannounced change which has only recently started to be applied, with the penalty being a group lock and the deletion of all chapters (seemingly including user read markers and other metadata) without warning. There is no guarantee the ban is lifted even if the group removes all monetization from the site and commits to uploading all of their chapters without paywalls. It's an incredibly hostile system.

The only forms of monetization they say are okay are asking for Patreon donations or commissions, so long as all work is posted publicly. I can't say I have much confidence in these remaining allowed given that they're not explicitly exempted in the rules. The end goal is probably for MangaDex/NamiComi to control all means of revenue generation through the site so they can charge platform fees, if I had to guess. I've never made money off of scanlation BTW, just so no one can accuse me of being biased. I'm just sick of sites pulling this stupid bait and switch.