Originally Posted by Barefootsies

This is nothing new. They openly have talked about this since 2007-2008 at the conferences. Basically in a nutshell, many affiliate programs said they were constantly being held hostage by greedy affiliates always threatening to pull their traffic. Demanding $100 PPS, paid in advance on joins, and alike.

In short, many at that time made a commitment to move traffic in-house and away from some of this slavery where they were overly dependent on the affiliate traffic model. The tubes came along at the right time, and made that even easier centralizing traffic and simply making it a pay to play. Now an affiliate program was no longer held ransom and could afford to stay in business.