Skydance Merger Leads to the Shutdown of South Park Discord

The moderators of the official South Park Discord have announced the immediate shutdown of the server. In a screenshot of their announcement, the volunteer team explained that over the past two years, communication with South Park Digital Studios and its parent company had dwindled from weekly interactions to gaps of six months or more.

“Paramount and South Park Digital Studios have effectively put us in charge of their official property and left us to manage it without consistent support,” the announcement stated.

A recent update to Discord’s bot policies caused one of the server’s moderation bots to go offline. Restoring the bot required personal information that the volunteer team, having faced doxxing incidents in the past, deemed inappropriate to provide, prompting them to reach out to Paramount for help.

“We felt […] Paramount, as the owner, should’ve completed this process. We received no response,” the moderators noted.

The recent merger between Paramount and Skydance, finalized last week, has further complicated matters. “We have exhausted all available avenues to attempt contact, and the formation of Skydance (the Paramount-WBD merger) has made finding contacts now an impossible task.”

The closure of the official South Park Discord is just one of many issues arising from the merger. Another incident, potentially linked to the merger, is a massive leak of Cartoon Network data, which saw over 200 gigabytes of information exposed, including show bibles, character art, storyboards, and production guides. KFC Spain even created a video using assets from the leak before it was quickly taken down, likely due to a flurry of DMCA notices from Skydance, although some accounts have managed to preserve the video.

Earlier this year, a leak of the Avatar Aang movie occurred, but an investigation that led to the arrest of a potential suspect revealed that it wasn’t the fault of Paramount. However, the closure of the South Park Discord is a direct consequence of the lack of communication from the parent company. With no way to replace the lost moderation bot without significant effort and expense, the volunteer team decided to lock the server, hoping for a response from Paramount to facilitate its restoration.

“It is important to remember that we are volunteers who have chosen to do this for the community for free. We are not South Park Digital Studios, Skydance, or Comedy Central staff. We are simply South Park fans.”