With this redesign came a policy change that limited access to the DataLounge Forum during high-traffic "Primetime" periods to fee-paying subscribers. This move was met with criticism from DataLounge users, as non-subscribers were completely shut out of the DataLounge Forum during these periods. DataLounge administrators asserted that Primetime was necessary to prevent slowdowns of other Mediapolis sites hosted on the same servers, and to generate revenue to cover DataLounge's hosting, bandwidth, and maintenance expenses. In the summer of 2007, DataLounge also instituted a policy that only paying members could start threads.