Screenshot: The Simpsons
Gearbox has just announced that the company will soon close its discussion forums and encourage all users to migrate to use Individual Game Discords for the needs of their community. I’m here once again to say that this is a very stupid idea.
A warning on the forums, which have been in their current form since 2015, and for much longer before that, explains that they have already been blocked for read-only and will soon be completely deleted, with users with 30 days for “save any content you want to keep”:
We’ve had many good years of conversations on Gearbox forums. This has been a great place to connect with all of you and a haven for incredible discussions, constructions and support. Over the past year, we’ve realized that many members of our community prefer to participate on our other social platforms, and that’s great. We love talking to all of you and keeping the community there.
Looking at where the conversations are taking place and where the comments are being expressed, we want to continue this dialogue on our social channels where much of the community is receiving their information. Our support team will continue to receive your feedback and concerns at support.gearbox.com.
Starting July 19, 2022, we will change the categories to Read Only. This means that members will no longer be able to create posts on forums, but people will be able to read previous posts. This will provide 30 days to save any content you want to keep before it closes. Later this summer, you’ll notice a new Gearbox website and the forums will be completely gone.
Thank you for years of chats, guides, support and for making this a great community. We look forward to continuing the conversation with you.
This was, is and will forever be the silliest trend in video game community management. I understand that forums are becoming less and less popular and that their glacial trends present a number of challenges. The desire to close forums when faced with declining use and perceived advances in technology is natural and completely understandable.
But changing that functionality to Discord is not the answer! Discord and forums are, as I explained in depth earlier on this site, completely different sites with completely different features!
The discord is great to talk about right now. It’s a place for real-time chat (or at least a few hours if you’re not so busy), a sleek way to manage multiple chat rooms and voice communications, and if that’s what you want, and millions of people around. the world does it, for a lot of needs and desires, then great!
Forums are not the same. They are not at all similar. Forums are more deliberate, more considerate, and while they are far from perfect — I’m sure you can post a billion examples of people who are neither deliberate nor considered in forums — the point is that they are more permanent.
Forums create a log, a file in which we can search, so that when we want to review issues, or find help with a problem, or see what was going on for a certain amount of time, we can do it. There’s a paper trail, and while this sometimes leads to embarrassing versions of TV shows and game revelations, other times it offers huge help with technical issues or parts of a game you’re stuck in.
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Video game publishers and studios, I ask you, if you really need to find a way to migrate your communities and their legacy to a new platform or service, please find (or do!) One that is best suited for the task.