During the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con panel for "The Legend of Korra," Bryan Konietzko remained cordial but criticized the way Nickelodeon announced the digital release of Book 3 episodes.

"So obviously there's been a big shakeup," said co-creator Bryan Konietzko during the panel. "We wanted to address that quickly but we don't want to take too much time because we're here to have fun and we have stuff you guys haven't seen yet. But pulling it off the channel and moving it to digital exclusively is part of the huge sea change in the whole industry. I'm sure you've seen articles about cable numbers and streaming and companies doing their own content and all sorts of stuff. So obviously we're in the middle of a huge change. And things have changed just for us since we did in Avatar in 2005-2008 and then when we came back in 2012. And when Book 1 of 'Korra' came out it did pretty good on TV but its online presence was just insane. Not only the chatter from all the fans but the actual numbers in terms of digital downloads and streaming, it's just been huge. And as the show's gone along, by Book 2, the numbers in the digital streaming greatly outweighed the channel."

"It's no secret that 'Avatar,' especially 'Korra,' is not typical Nickelodeon fare. And so they've had kind of a hard time fitting it into their programming. But basically the Book 2 finale, the numbers were insane when they streamed it, when it went on Nick.com. It was the biggest event they had that year. And that show, digital downloads for that season was amazing. And, as you've seen, not so much on the channel. So it's just part of this shift over. It definitely caught us by surprise and it wasn't necessarily done in the smoothest way and that was upsetting to many of you and us as well. So, we're moving over to digital. It's actually a plan that was in place earlier and it changed course and then went back in a bit of a messy way. But thanks for sticking with us."

The rest of the panel was devoted to viewing episode 8 of Book 3, plus a brief and selective Q&A section and some concept art.

"Overall I felt like this panel was a bit of a letdown," wrote Avatar the Last Airbender Online founder Morgan Bannon. "I hope to actually hear what was said at the start about the digital move, but outside of the episode airing, it does not seem like it was the most exciting panel. Fan questions were terrible and the concept art while great will come in the art book."