Bethesda's Forum Will be Shut Down

Bethesda's official discussion forum will be shutting down soon. The community has just over a month to archive the most important threads.

IN A NUTSHELL:

Bethesda is shutting down its official discussion forums;
Starting on May 24, forum threads will be read-only - the final shutdown of categories will begin on July 6 this year;
The developer encourages users to archive their most important threads and invites them to Discord.

Bethesda has announced that its official discussion forum will close on May 24, 2021. The final days of operation are to allow the community to wrap up the threads they have started. After that date, the forum's content will still be viewable for more than 30 days. That's the time Bethesda is giving users to archive threads that interest them. The process of final closure of individual categories will begin on July 6.

"After many years of fostering a thoughtful and passionate community on the official Bethesda forums, we have made the decision to sunset the forums on Bethesda.net. [...] The forums have seen many changes over the years, and we’ve enjoyed seeing our community grow and evolve alongside Bethesda and all of our games. Now, though, with the numerous ways people are communicating, we feel the time is right to move away from the forums and chat with you where you prefer to be," Bethesda

The place that today's community allegedly prefers is Bethesda's official server on Discord. The developer invites forum users to move to this channel of communication, encouraging conversations not only on the general channel, but also on those dedicated to individual games. It should be noted, however, that the forums of The Elder Scrolls Online will continue to operate - they are not directly connected with Bethesda.net and, as for now, the developer apparently does not intend to close them.

The era of online discussion forums has been heading towards an inevitable end for several years now. Bethesda has joined the ranks of companies shutting down these community centers - Sony and Riot Games, for example, already did this, shutting down the League of Legends forum. Aside from killing off the "good old days", of which online forums are the epitome (at least for those who grew up with them), probably the biggest drawback of closing the forums is the inability to find interesting threads - especially those concerning bugs and technical problems that happen once in a while.... and which were kind enough to happen to us particularly.

Bethesda encourages users to report these problems to support and reminds that as of May 24, 2021 we will no longer be able to post on Bethesda.net forums, and as of July 6 this year the categories will be subsequently closed (starting with the least popular). If you want to save some important discussions, it's better not to wait with it until the last minute.