Why is the forums actually closing?

Community
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As we all know, the forums is closing really soon, but does anyone actually know why?

The forums has probably payed a great part in all of our episode journeys whether that’s writing or just reading, so why would episode want to take that from us?

I’m sorry if they have already said why, I must have missed it! Let me know though. :heartpulse:

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Hi dear! What I understand from their original post is that the activity in the forums is not as high as it used to be, and the amount of money they have to pay to keep the forums up is too high. So, these are the reasons why. Hope this helped! :blush: :blob_hearts:

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That sounds fair, but I’m sure they are making enough money with the prices of VIP, Gems and passes lmao :sob::sob:

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You do have a point there. I have no idea how they made this decision because of that☹️

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No social media activity has been as high as it was in 2020 and we should all be grateful that it isn’t.

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The Forum activity has been dwindling for a while. As you must know, keeping up a website (especially a Forum) takes a lot of resources. Episode doesn’t want to use said resources anymore, they don’t believe it’s worth it anymore.

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I agree with you! It’s definitely so sad. And discord is certainly not the safest place at all… I don’t think I’ll be joining it because of what you what you just said. P*rn links?! Seriously? Hope they’ll somehow be blocked when they appear…

Edit: this post was flagged as “inappropriate”… I won’t even bother to ask why as I cannot reason with random flaggers anymore. Guysss it’s the wrong people you’re always flagging :smiling_face_with_tear::smiling_face_with_tear:

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It happened twice in one night, and moderation did nothing about it for a while. Then, people continued to @everyone causing the community chat to blow up. It is really frustrating that discord will be the only way for everyone to talk and communicate, of course we have instagram but it is still hard to find help and resources on there.

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It’s sad that they don’t believe it’s worth it while most the community is fighting for the forums to stay. Unfortunately, I’m starting to believe it’s unlikely that they will decide to keep the forums up.

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Unfortunately, their decision to close the forums is final. :confused:

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They reason they gave in their statement is that there’s not enough activity here on the forums to justify keeping it open.

If you ask me, this just isn’t true; sure, there’s not new posts and replies every second of the day, but there is still many of us who hop on to catch up on the latest news and get story-related help from the community. They actually had plenty of other options to boost the activity here: notify app users of the forums with some built-in feature, post about the forums on Instagram or TikTok, ask big Episode creators to talk about the forums, etc. Instead, they made, arguably, the most drastic decision they could have possibly made.

Fortunately, the closing date has been pushed back by a month (from June 28th to the end of August). A small win, and certainly not what anyone wanted, but at least we have a bit more time to save posts and appreciate the forums while they’re still here.

Some have speculated if there’s more to why the Episode team is closing the forums. (Sharing some of their thoughts here…) Take these theories with a grain of salt, as we’ll likely never know the real reason, or if what they’ve stated is the truth.

  • Costs to maintain the website: Like @/Hairycane stated in their reply, some think that it’s costly to keep the forums running.
    • This hasn’t been confirmed, but some people here on the forums did some digging. Its a pretty small amount to keep the site running, and considering the cash flow Episode has been getting since 2018, they shouldn’t really need to worry about money.
  • Higher-ups running Episode into the ground: it’s actually a business practice to run certain companies into the grounds, then file for bankruptcy. (Not even joking.) This is especially common when it comes to creative businesses.
  • Episode wants to censor a large part of the community that is open with the things they’re not happy about. By closing and deleting the forums, a lot of the controversies Episode has gotten themselves into will be nearly impossible to read and know about if you weren’t there when they happened.

If you want to read up on the forum community’s response, check these links.

Reddit has also been pretty unhappy with this choice, and many comments replying to Episode’s Insta posts have also expressed their distaste for this situation.

IMO, this choice definitely feels like it was determined by what would make the most money, regardless of the specifics. : /

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Knowing Episode, I’ve believed since their announcement that this decision was non-negotiable. Still, together with everyone else I fought against. While you’ll be able to find comments of my saying that the Forums can’t be saved, I even donated to a petition I believed was useless. Just for the slight chance, you know?

Anyways… It’s pretty crazy. I’ve seen authors, old and new unite to let their voices be heard. The amount of people that joined the Discord… I’ve never seen so many people I know are involved in Episode online. Many of us have moved not only ours, but many other Threads to Discord so that like us, new people may find them on their way to look for help.

It’s a real shame. It really is.

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Agree, I just googled the dangers of discord…
Posts re. Predators , hackers etc. came up a lot
I’m not joining it.

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Can you believe episode has hidden most of my messages that explain what happen in the discord server :sob:

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Exactly, I’ve been on Discord servers back when I was a bit too young to even have social media (that’s my fault though :sweat_smile:) and I’ve encountered a huge amount of predators. What if there are still some young community members? What’s going to happen to them?
Most Discord users have no shame, and therefore I’m not going to join either.

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It’s genuinely disgusting some of the things people are sending on there. p* * n links especially

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Omg, this is why I don’t want to join :unamused: :face_vomiting:

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Is it true the official closing of the forums is being pushed back until August? @aromaticcerise

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