RPG Maker Official Forums Shutting Down, Deleting 14+ Years of Community Resources
Gotcha Gotcha Games has announced it will permanently delete the official RPG Maker forums on December 11, 2026, with no plans for an official archive or backup. The forums, active since 2012, contain over 1.4 million messages including tutorials, plug-ins, and development guides critical to indie game creators. The loss threatens a foundational knowledge base for a game engine behind beloved titles like Omori, To the Moon, and Yume Nikki.
Gotcha Gotcha Games announced on June 11, 2026, that it will shut down and fully delete the official RPG Maker forums at rpgmakerweb.com on December 11, 2026, replacing them with a new platform called RPG Maker Guild. The existing forums, which have been active since 2012, contain over 1.4 million messages spanning tutorials, plug-ins, guides, and community discussions — resources that many developers rely on daily. Critically, the company confirmed in an FAQ that no public archive or backup will be provided, meaning all content will be permanently erased. New account registrations were disabled immediately upon announcement, and posting will be disabled on June 18, leaving users only days to organize before the site goes read-only. Community members have responded with anger and urgency, forming Discord servers to coordinate manual archival efforts and turning to the Wayback Machine as a fallback option. The transition appears partly tied to a prior split between Gotcha Gotcha Games and its former publisher Komodo, which still operates the old forum. Critics have also noted that the replacement platform, RPG Maker Guild, has been poorly received due to limited features and a subpar interface.
What's missing
It remains unclear whether Komodo, as the current operator of the old forum, has any independent ability or legal obligation to preserve the content, or whether the deletion decision rests solely with Gotcha Gotcha Games. The specific technical or contractual reasons why a read-only archive was deemed infeasible have not been publicly explained by either party.
How coverage differed
Polygon framed the story with stronger emphasis on community fury and the self-destructive nature of the decision, while Eurogamer and Dexerto adopted a more elegiac tone focused on the cultural and practical loss. Dexerto uniquely connected the situation to the broader Stop Killing Games movement, adding political context absent from the other outlets.
What different sources said
- DexertoCenter
RPG Maker is deleting 14 years of community content and fans have days to save them
- PolygonCenter
RPG Maker users could lose years of important history as official forums shut down
- EurogamerCenter
RPG Maker forum users are racing to archive almost 15 years of valuable resources, as game engine maker announces impending move
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