Gearbox Software is killing its forums and jumping ship to Discord

gamedeveloper.com:

Borderlands developer Gearbox Software is closing its forums and migrating over to Discord. With this, the studio's older format of web-based communities is being eliminated in favor of real-time engagement provided by Discord communities, similar to other developers such as Bethesda and Activision. 

On August 1, 2022, the developer's official forums -- which are currently in read-only mode -- will be shut down when a website update is rolled out. Forum users currently have 30 days to save any content they wish to keep.

"During the past year we noticed many of our community members prefer to engage on our other social platforms," wrote Gearbox. "Looking at where the conversations are taking place and feedback is expressed, we want to continue that dialog on our social channels where much of the community is getting their information."

For those who need Gearbox's customer support, it will still be available at the regular Support website. Each of Gearbox's individual games -- Borderlands, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, Homeworld, and Godfall -- have their own separate Discords for players to join. 

The news of Gearbox jumping to Discord comes just a day after Microsoft revealed that the online gaming platform's voice chat will soon be available on Xbox consoles. The feature will let Xbox users switch between Discord Voice and Xbox voice chat, and allow them to continue voice calls on the Xbox. 

Last year, Sony announced it had made a minor investment in Discord and said it plans to integrate Discord into PlayStation Network and mobile. At time of writing, Discord support hasn't been rolled out to PlayStation consoles. 

Over time, forums have become less popular and more game developers have become more reliant on social media