Link: https://www.timeextension.com/news/2026/06/this-is-why-preservation-matters-14-years-of-rpg-maker-community-content-is-about-to-be-erased

Crossposted from https://retrolemmy.com/post/39370642

"There are currently no plans to provide a public archive or backup of the current forum once it has been closed. We encourage users to save any posts, guides, resources, or other content they wish to keep before the forum closure. Content that you would like to continue sharing with the community may be reposted on the new forum."

Always sad to see a forum die... you know it"s just gonna be replaced with a subreddit... that anyone who criticizes Israel can't post on

About the Israel part, I get a sensation the only thing Reddit is favorable towards is running its own brand to the ground by any means necessary. Anything gets you a ban there from what I can observe, even non-ideological stuff. Even VPN IPs they seem to have configured the site to use as a means to spread bans, an account ban tarnishing the given IP, and another user trying to log in to that IP tarnishing his/her account, tarnishing also other IPs the user may try to use.

About forums dying, in RPG Maker's case, though they give the thumbs up for people to backup whatever they can, which is nice, a question comes to mind, why not leave the old forum as read only, similar to what GOG does with its archived forums (e.g. the Russian and Brazilian sections)? Upkeep and maintenance of a static section of a site should be minimal.

It still costs many, many, many $$$ for backups, etc. If you can't afford the forum, you can't afford the backups.

It's sad to see forums die, but they require revenue to keep going/stay alive.

GOG got rid of their forums?

Mosty no, only small parts. Russian because of geopolitics. The Brazilian forum because not many Brazilians used their services so around 2018, they disabled the respective, nation-specific forum. Also very old general posts were moved to an archived page, though the reason evades me.

But otherwise, it's still all there.