Why is iTunes unsubscribing me from podcasts?!

I subscribe to several podcasts which are downloaded to my desktop pc, and I listen to them on my iPod. I update iTunes every week with played episodes, refresh the podcasts etc. However, recently, iTunes has been automatically unsubscribing me from podcasts for some reason, and has also deleted my Saved podcasts!

The Settings are as follows:

Limit episodes - off

Download episodes - on

Delete played episodes - on

iTunes used to work really well, but over the last couple of years, Apple have been continually messing about with it and most of the changes aren't beneficial to the end user. The whole point of podcasts is that the user listens to them whenever they want. End users may choose to keep historical podcasts for all sorts of reasons (when I want to keep them, I simply don't mark them as played, or move them to saved).

Can someone tell me what on earth is going on, and why I Apple have taken to unsubscribing users from podcasts as well as removing saved podcasts. This is complete madness!