Tuesday, November 5, 2024

What Happened To GameBattles (MLG) Forums? – 2019 Update

GameBattles continues to be one of the most popular online tournament sites for popular titles such as Call of Duty, Fortnite, FIFA and a few others. But less than two years ago, the website lost one of its most visited sections.

In 2017, the website suddenly removed its forums, leaving gamers with little ways to communicate with staff and search for competition. The removal came out of nowhere but the gaming site tried to keep things normal by debuting a reddit page.

The page was supposed to be the replacement of forums but some visited the page just to ask where the forums had gone. In one post, one GB staff member explains that the forums were removed for a few reasons such as lack of activity and the difficulty to maintain them.

Popularity During 2003 and COD Games

Forums had been on the page since 2003, when the site focused mainly on the SOCOM games, which were very popular during the PlayStation 2 days. The website later expanded and added other ladders for games such as Call of Duty, FIFA, NBA 2K and many others.

The forums were an important part of the site since they allowed gamers to search for competition or even recruit free agents. The forums were divided into many sections, including graphics design, free agents and even sports.

A lot of the sections were inactive, especially for the games that weren’t popular. But games such as Call of Duty and Battlefield had very active sections. Call of Duty games for the Xbox 360 had hundreds of people posting on GameBattles forums.

Reddit Page and Other Forum Replacements

The popularity would not continue to grow with the later releases in the COD series but the forums still had a decent amount of people and staff. GameBattles would later introduce extra features for its forums. The features, which were heavily requested by the community, were added as part of the Premium subscription.

In 2017, the forums weren’t as popular as they were in 2003 or during the COD Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2 days but the removal caught everyone by surprise. According to those who post on the reddit page, the tournament site now has a discord server that acts similar to the forums.

New Ways To Communicate

The forums have not returned since their removal in 2017, despite the several complaints from those who used them to talk to their friends, recruit or challenge other teams. The tournament site appears to have no plans in the near future to bring the forums back.

The reddit page doesn’t seem to be very popular either, with its latest post coming 12 hours ago. The second most recent posts were made 12 days ago, so it looks like the discord server is probably where most of the discussion is done between teams.

Have you ever played a match on GameBattles? Did you ever check out their forums? Let us know in the comments.

Sean Farlow
Sean Farlow
University graduate with a bachelor's degree in business administration. Big fan of sports teams from South FL.
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