Announcement: Community forum closure

Hello, Beginning 27th February, the PlayStation forums will no longer be available.

[NecrumOddBoy]

Interesting because I'm very curious to know if this correlates with the PlayStation 5 and what Sony is doing with the community moving forward

[xTonyMontana]

How would it? No community app or feature can replace forums especially for those of us at work on our PCs.

[Concertoine]

Miiverse?

[mandingo]

Getting left in the dust

[CaptainHenry916]

Obscure_Observer Needs some help lol. It will be interested to see what's next for PlayStation in the world of communications.

[Intentions]

So cost savings

[pgrzeszczyk]

Is that something strange or wrong?

[Evolve]

I believe something new is coming that it can't be integrated with the old system.

[sho0ok360]

So you are saying even their forums are not Backward compatible? /sarcasm

[Evolve]

Most veteran users/ moderators lost their archives when Sony upgraded to forums 2.0, right before they announced (My PlayStation). Where the BC you're talking about when it happened?

[sho0ok360]

"Where the BC you're talking about when it happened?"

Being remastered :)

[MadLad]

I laughed.
I mean ... accurate .. but I laughed.

I'm genuinely appreciative that 5 will be compatible with 4 games though.

[Evolve]

I've lost 4 years of localized content, articles, and comments during that upgrade.

[rainslacker]

They're just moving them to a new server. Making sony products more of an ecosystem kind of like samsung does. Itll be more like one login for all services. This was laid out last year I believe. At the time the exact details weren't made known, but it makes the most sense. Would be nice if they transfer the posts from the forums over onto a new service. There is some good info in there that would take time to populate again.

[gamer7804]

they would say that in an annoucement in the forums like, these forums are moving! etc. Sounds like a cost savings to me.

[rainslacker]

Could be. But I know they're trying to centralize their different products and services under one account structure. It is possible that their plans don't involve specific PS forums like they are closing up, but I'm sure their general Sony forums will have some place to discuss PS.

Either way, it's not signaling any trouble, and even if Sony was just abandoning forums altogether, I doubt it would make much difference. They were pretty inconsistent in their help on the public forums, and generally, using their customer service forums on Sony, or even their facebook page got more immediate results.

[RazzerRedux]

That is bizarre. They could at least say why.

[2pacalypsenow]

I used the forums during the PS2 and PS3 days but after they updated it around 2014 it was a mess as I barely used them.

[Sophisticated_Chap]

I think it was more around 2010 when they changed the format. Before that though, the forums were awesome, and easy to find what you were looking for. Microsoft's forums are not much better than Sony's forums right now either. I can't understand why they have to mess with something that should be so simple, and then basically hide everything, and make you search through their local search in order to find a thread. Steam is where it's at when it comes to forums these days, since it's still pretty much an oldschool system. Although, the Steam forums were better when they were still the old "Steam Powered User Forums".

[2pacalypsenow]

Yeah it was after that, that I stopped using them .

[rainslacker]

I havent been a fan of the forums the way they are now. To many searches return single post questions, and any answers are buried. I hope if they do something new, they fix that.

If they make it like their dev forums, that'd be great, because those are well moderated, the search function works well, and similar posts are grouped together if new answers are given to questions asked prior.

[NarooN]

I left for good around that time. I signed up in early 2005 and was active up until around 2010 or so. They kept changing the site and removing many of the older subforums and forums for specific games. So much useful and cool information, just permanently lost to time, and for no good reason. Honestly even back then some of the admins and mods were biased and woefully inept, so it didn't surprise me that the forums fell into the shitter down the line.

[Tross]

That is when I left too. I was one of the MVPs letting the current (at the time) admins know I didn’t like their proposed changes. Alas, this was also when us “old” MVPs who liked things the way they were before were in the minority as we were quickly being displaced by the newbies, many of whom hadn’t even made a single post on the PlayStation forums prior to becoming an MVP, and who were perfectly fine with the changes. So, I made tracks.

I will be eternally grateful for that admin team sending me to E3 in 2013 along with a lot of other MVPs, but I’ll never forget that they closed so many sub-forums, all of which were their own little communities that meant a lot to so many people, myself included, just so they could dump everything in the General board. The people who voted for the change had no concept of what those communities meant to some of us as a good portion of them had never posted on the forums prior to voting for the changes. The community I was so passionate about died that day.

Truth be told, there were changes I was none too thrilled about happening prior to that, and many of us MVPs hopped onto a different forum for a while before coming back to that one, but that was the final nail in the coffin for me and some of my forum pals.

[Shiken]

Could be that the PS5 will have a knew community app similar to My Nintendo moving forward.

[Smokehouse]

Probably going to be integrated into the ps5. It would make sense.

[IRetrouk]

Strange one ain't it?, pushing users to social media platforms seems to be the plan, atleast based on their announcement on the forums.

[Smokehouse]

Or turning the Ps5 into its own social platform. I don’t know how populated their forums are but forcing those people into the PS5 platform shouldn’t be an issue.

[rainslacker]

Forums go through spurts. Their facebook and twitter is pretty active.

[IRetrouk]

Maybe, but then wouldnt they also need to include the ps4 and its users? Not every playstation gamer is going to switch day 1 and I dont see sony only allowing access to forums or help if you buy into the new system, they are either pushing for social media use (forum post seems to suggest this) or are completely reformating the forums and starting again.

[lildudexst]

Relax must study and came to the conclusion it time for a major update to the ps forums it outdated as beep that simple.

[spambot0815]

can't say that i will miss them.

[Sophisticated_Chap]

I remember when the Sony forums were the best forums on the net, before they changed them to the current format, back a few years after the PS3 launched. I think this was around the same time that they changed the PS Store interface on PS3, which most people didn't like, since it became slow and laggy. Steam definitely has the best gaming forums these days, and it's too bad, because Sony's forums were just as good way back in the day.

[Mooncake]

This is an affront to old people that still use forums like it is 1999!

[Segata]

I'm going to assume this does not affect PSN Profiles. They are a 3rd party I think.

[sypher]

Yep they just have access to the PlayStation API.

So far nothing has changed on that front... (yet)

[OhReginald]

Most people talk on reddit or other community sites....i think playstation has their own official reddit as well...

[TheHateTheyGive]

My god the worlds going to end!!!!!!! Sony's dead, xbox and pc wins, they now get all of the playstation exclusives they been port begging for years!!!

[gold_drake]

spring cleaning?

[jznrpg]

I haven’t been on PS forums for such a long time I didn’t realize that were still up and running .

[SolidGamerX]

Never used it but this has to be the end of Playstation for sure, s/

[Futureshark]

Must be a ton of old forums there that haven't been commented on for years, as it goes back to PS2 days.

Probably going to replace it with something new for PS5, or just rely on social media platforms going forward.

[Rachel_Alucard]

All the people commenting that it's going to be replaced or improved for PS5, that's not what's going on. It's being shut down because social media and reddit have taken over traditional forums, as this is exactly what happened with Bioware's forums and many other sites over the years. It's not coming back or being upgraded.

[OB1Biker]

Well that's a shame

[OG_TK_Cole]

I have a funny feeling that the new "Community" will be "integrated" into the PS5. You also will be able to use it from your Console, Phone and PC.

[Tedakin]

Those PS5 parts are so expensive, they're having to shut down the forums to cut costs.

This is obvious sarcasm.

[RoseSapphire]

Between Reddit, Twitter and general customer service contacts I'm not sure there's much need for personal forums anymore.

[zmeatheadz]

miiverse 2.0

[Mr_Writer85]

I used to be on the EU ones every day from 2003-2008.

Then I got fed up with all the changes and couldn't be bothered to keep going back.

[Godmars290]

Is it really a big deal if the blog forum is still there?

[frostypants]

Those forums have been a mess for a decade now.

[ITPython]

Even though I never visit the forums anymore, it was quite the regular staple for me back in the day. Heck my account is almost old enough to be a millennial (registered there in 2004). Back then is when they used Lithium for their forums, and it was a great place to hang out and just have fun. But for some reason they ditched Lithium and kept "upgrading" the forums. And each time it just got worse and worse and worse. A perfect example of fixing something that wasn't broken.

Shame to see it go away, as those forums were a big part of my life about 15 years ago. But it is understandable.

[chiefJohn117]

Uh oh....

[Bismarn]

damn, at first I thought they were closing this community and was really stoked. I'm toxic as f***. Oh well.

[Tross]

Well, this is sad. I haven’t been on the PlayStation forums in years but there was a time when I was on there all the time, and I even became an MVP. I have great memories of the forum and hope everyone I met on there is doing well. Maybe I should try and reach out to some of my old friends on PSN. There’s one I still chat with regularly on a private forum.

Even though I haven’t been on the PlayStation forum in ages, I still feel as though I would be remiss if I didn’t reflect on the forum and what it meant to me all those years ago. It will be missed, and this news certainly marks the end of an era.

[AK91]

So it’s to focus more on social media that does kinda make sense since I get most of my knowledge from Sony (and others) on said platforms.

[FanboysKiller]

I think this correlates with E3 , they can't stand trolls and youtube videos that makes fun of them.

[zero_jp]

This infuriates me. The forums use to be so much fun and cool during the PS3 days. Then they did a revamp that no one wanted and asked for and people simply stopped using them.

End of an era I suppose.

[Mr_Skyfish]

Begining on my birthday we're shutting this shit down

[drizzom]

hoo boy...

[MasterCornholio]

Doing a little bit of additional research.

Aranea

"The official PlayStation forums never recovered after Sony ditched the third party host and wanted more control over them (creating their own forum tools). Basic stuff such as sending private messages, embedding images, videos, etc. and pretty much every basic feature took months to be implemented. The forums continued on life support with small features and little to no moderation. Spam bots and trolling topics would remain for days before someone removed them. It's a shame as i used to be pretty active on the official PlayStation forums many years ago, but i stopped being active after the whole mess when Sony took over and created their own forum software."

Sounds like the forums were a bit if a mess even before they closed it.