RPG Maker Developer Reverses Course, Will Archive Old Forums After Outcry
The developer initially planned to delete all forum content when transitioning to a new official forum, but user backlash forced a policy change toward preservation.
Reporting from 1 sources: Automaton.
Gotcha Gotcha Games announced on June 12 that it is considering archiving the Tsukuru Web Forum and RPG Maker Forums, which had been scheduled for closure. The reversal follows widespread criticism from users who said the shutdown would destroy decades of accumulated community knowledge, assets, and plugins.
Gotcha Gotcha Games reversed its plan to shut down the official RPG Maker forums without preserving their content. On June 11, the company announced that both the Japanese Tsukuru Web Forum and the English-language RPG Maker Forums would close within the year as part of a move to a new community site, RPG Maker Guild. All posts, assets, and account data were to be deleted, with no migration to the new forum. Users were told to back up anything they wanted to keep.
The response was swift. Longtime RPG Maker users pointed out that the forums held decades of Q&A, tutorials, plugins, and user-created assets that served as essential reference material for the game development software. Gotcha Gotcha Games acknowledged the outcry on June 12 and said it is now coordinating methods to archive the old forums' community assets. The company noted that copyright for each post belongs to the original poster, which complicates direct migration, but said it is working on a solution that preserves past assets without infringing rights. Specific archiving plans have not yet been announced.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.