For a long time, since Steam's olden days of the early 00's, they've had the Steam user forums. They worked like a standard forum website for discussion and troubleshooting for any games on Valve's internet marketplace. Since then, Steam has integrated more and more into their app as opposed to seperate websites like the forum. Today, they've officially pulled the plug on the forums and now its web address redirects to Steam discussions.
Stean discussions may actually be more familiar to typical users of Steam, as they're easily accessed, located right in a specific game's page on Steam. The upsetting part about this news, besides plain-old nostalgia, is the loss of searchable knowledge previously located in the old forums. Most fixes have migrated to the discussions, but it's all been manually. It's likely a number of troubleshooting tips have been lost in the transition.
Ultimately, Valve most likely made this move to consolidate tips, tricks and support. It will probably end up helping the community more than hurt. Steam is always expanding, partnering with HTC to produce the Vive, and even bringing a few streaming videos to the platform.
