In an announcement that was posted directly to the forums, Gearbox explains that its forums will becoming read-only as of July 19, 2022, for 30 days. Following this timeframe, the forums will be taken down entirely. Instead, Gearbox have said users should look out for a new Gearbox website, report concerns to its support team, and have referred existing users to its community Discord. Not to sound like a broken record, but Discord is not a suitable replacement for forums. Admittedly, Discord is a fantastic tool for voice calls and real-time conversations about topics of interest, typically in categorised channels. However, Discord’s functionality compared to that of a forum is wildly different. For instance, while Discord has tried to introduce ’threads’, they’ve not caught on. These are about as similar to forum threads as you’d get within the communication service, but they still don’t compare to what forum users expect from the functionality of specifically-designed message boards. With Discord being the private platform that it is, you also won’t find users’ discussions with a Google search. In fact, you’re not guaranteed to find what you need even when searching through Discord chats either. Forums are an easily accessible imprint on the web: communities come together to discuss points of interest or resolve issues, and months or years later down the line, someone like me can Google that query and get my answer – without having to trawl through Discord messages or join a new server. Additionally, there’s little consideration of the fact that a lot of people simply don’t want to join a Discord server for community engagement. We live in a climate where notifications are overwhelming, and some people don’t necessarily want to engage in these real-time conversations; they may just want an answer to their query and to play their game. Forums do a much better job of preserving these answers and important discussions. That said, Gearbox already has the cogs turning on this one. So, be sure to check out the forums and save anything you wish to keep before they’re gone forever. Forums are, by no means, perfect. However, they are an enormous help to many, and Discord is not a suitable replacement for them. Here’s to hoping more companies will focus on preserving forums, and finding more suitable replacements for them if necessary.
