Spare a thought out there for all the many communities on PlayStation 4. Sony recently announced that they would be closing down the communities feature on their last generation console – it didn’t reappear on PlayStation 5 – in April. As Sony’s focus shifts towards supporting their newest console, it’s only natural that features on PS4 that were once considered new and exciting get quietly forgotten and shut down. In a statement that they sent to users via email and online, they outlined that the feature would be closed to everyone next month.
The community feature was a novel addition back in 2015, creating spaces for fans of games and topics to stay within the PlayStation ecosystem and jump into games together. There were communities themed around games or interests (anime, TV shows, etc.) but also sub-groups within games (eg Need For Speed car meets and tuners).
However, you will still be able to stay connected and enjoy messaging features and more on your PS4™ console and PlayStation®App.”
In a rudimentary way, it was a basic version of Discord or an equivalent messaging service. However, when you joined a community there wasn’t a way to mute notifications like on Discord, so having to delete notifications about a community that you were interested in but only from time to time got annoying quickly.
This isn’t the only thing to be closed that was there previously. Sony has also shuttered the Play Together feature in party chat, where players could mass invite their friends to play a multiplayer session together. They also announced that they would stop selling movie and TV rentals after August, and also shut down are a whole suite of PS3, PS Vita, and PSP features as well.
