This is how I see things now, regarding the Envato Forum closure:
Let’s remember what type of discussions were mostly happening on the forums recently:
- there were people who were complaining about Elements being too pushy and also complaining about their market earnings dropping
- there were some Elements sellers complaining about earnings dropping
- there were some new sellers complaining about their plugins or themes being hard rejected
- there were some customers complaining about the support not being honored on their purchase by some random seller or asking for support with some random issue they encountered with a product.
As all the above is negative promotion for the services offered by Envato, so if you sum the above up, it is a logical step from their part to shut the forum down. They were paying hosting fees and keeping up a team of several people to take care of the forums, which was actually hurting their marketing game.
It is a PR related decision and also one to control the community and the way to form a better public opinion of Envato, by censoring independent voices who used to complain about stuff not being ideal on the Envato forums.