Just my hot take -
I don't expect the forums are going anywhere, but that's kinda been part of the problem with theescapist going as far back as 2.0 . It's likely just gonna get ignored.
They completely cleansed the forums, but then, made no effort to promote it, then they redid the user content and comments section and obfuscated it so much so that no one bothers to engage with the site anymore. Nick seemed to believe that everything is going great, but idk I question how much site traffic the escapist was actually getting, especially if the owners were trying to do a big content push.
I do like some of the content that Escapist has been doing, but idk I did not find Mooneys diatribes on film/tv consistently interesting, entertaining or accessible. I liked all the 3 minute reviews, yahtzee and some random review content. I don't watch the game night or D&D stuff. It just didn't excite me to Check Escapist daily the way I did on 1.0, when you had a bunch of content creators doing "different" things. Yeah I know that turned into a big nightmare, I'm just talking about what brought me to the site.
I guess if I could put it in a nutshell, somehow I'm just not that surprised. I think the owners probably wanted to do LTT numbers and to do that I think they need more myriad content and more user engagement. If not the forums, then something else to boost more return traffic.
I kinda miss the web comics.