Steam’s User Forums Have Officially Been Shut Down

For years, the gaming community loved to come to Steam's gaming forums. A staple on the PC game-selling site for several years, the forums served as a way for fans of games to get together and discuss it, whether it was reporting technical problems or just talking about certain things within the game. But, alas, their time has come.

With the growth of Steam Discussions in game hubs nowadays – providing users a handier way to talk about their games and reach out for support if need be – Valve has made the controversial decision to remove the forums from its Steam site, instead redirecting to its Steam discussions page.

Now, while the Discussions page is a bit easier in terms of access, with a tab right on the game page where gamers can go to instead of having to sift through forums, there's still something about the shutdown of a community that's a bit saddening. After all, they've been around for years, and Steam has gathered millions of customers since that time, so a few people are sure to be broken-hearted about the change.

But on top of that, with the removal of the forums, a lot of the information that was posted before with games is now pretty much gone unless it's been shifted over to the Discussion page, which isn't likely for every title out there. A lot of troubleshooting tips are probably gone the way of the dodo now, along with any gaming advice that would've helped with the titles themselves.

Valve decided to do this in order to make things easier, but it's going to be odd seeing how the community moves on from it, especially since they're so used to going to the forums and all. Of course, there could always be something new set up for community, especially with streaming videos now available on the platform, and the possible expansion of Discussions to include more fan talk.

But, yes, let's have a moment of silence for the Steam forums. They will be missed, especially when it came to hunting down suggestions for stuff to do in older games. We'll always have discussion areas to turn to, but, let's be honest, the forums were magic to some folks.