So this morning I found out that the RPG Maker forums will be shutting down this year, and itâs really just another depressing thing to see.
If you read the link the company does of course say theyâre replacing the existing forums with new ones, and Iâm sure no one would say the old ones didnât perhaps need a lil bit of a glow up, some tech debt fixing⊠but thereâs a few key notes in there:
They are NOT carrying over any history, data messages etc. from the old forums
They are NOT archiving, retaining or in any way saving the existing forums in any way
They have NOT provided any reasoning past âas part of continued efforts to support developersâ
As an offhand, moderate read, this sounds to me like a desire for some change in the forums but deciding nuking everything is less expensive than rebuilding and carrying over info.
If Iâm cynical, and likely realistic? Probably to increase sales of their latest GameMaker software by making it inherently more difficult for someone getting the older software for cheap pushing it to its limits. The amount of institutional knowledge on those forums is absurd.
And even if it is a benign reason, itâs still terrible because what do you mean youâre doing this with no recourse or potential for change? You sell software that runs on community goodwill? In an era where people are pulling away to open source software?? Crazy.
There are yeeeaaars of answers, plugins, suggestion, community built up on those forums - Iâve used the em to learn and grow my own skillet!!! And soon it wonât exist.
At the very least, they gave a âheads upâ - the deletion occurs mid December, so archiving by the community is possible from now. Itâs just absurd that it needs to happen in the first place.
Itâs just reflective of how the industry is right now - and why itâs so important for communities to grow and build up knowledge together, knowledge that is NOT reliant on a company that can pull the plug at any time in the very name of the very customers, users and supporters they are screwing over.
