I highly doubt the drama in the off-topic forum has anything to do with developers leaving. I contrarily suspect that it's the attacks, assholery, and drama that occur in the threads the developers open to discuss their games that does it. It clearly tells the developers that there is a very vocal minority (or perhaps more than just a minority) who cannot control themselves and will lash out at anything and everything just because.

As many others out there, I don't think the Off-Topic Room should be closed, nor even bann political discussions, although I admit that such last point is more controversial.
In addition to the fact that many internet places have off-topic area, in forums like this where we are a community of a minority (blind and visually impaired people) such area is even more important than in other places, because it is an useful resource to know opinions of members in our disability community (remember that different disabled people had or have very different levels of exposure and contact with other people with the same disability spectrum) about very various topics, for which there is not always a specific internet place for the blind.

@8, this would not be a good idea. Off-topic areas in internet communities are a courtesy of civility to avoid administrators to seem totalitarians or too strict tyrannies, which works because for common sense they trust that people will not abuse of such areas and ultimately will know how to keep the community main focus in the topic for which it was created for. For its nature, which is speaking about things that aren't the main focus of the place, it should formally still be viewed as an occasional room for tell something without the need of creating a different community, in which due to being new we couldn't gather opinions of so many people.
This is especially true when the rooms that are part of the main focus of this forum don't have sub-rooms. Developers Room and the New Releases Room are good examples of rooms in which there could be sub-rooms for different platforms or multi-platform announcements/discussions. If this is not implemented at all in the rooms about the main subject of this forum, I don't see why it should be implemented in Off-Topic Room, which formally should be kept to a minimum.

While political discussions (I'd also add religion ones, like many others) are especially strong and aggressive when users go off control like they are in the real life, I think the problems that take place on these strong discussions, such as personal attack and hate speech, are already covered in the current rules. Personal attacks, hate speech and disrespect also happen sometimes in topics not related to both religion and politics, even in non-off-topic discussions. BTW, closing the off-topic room or forbidding political/religion discussions would not solve the problems, or at least the most important ones, that this decision is meant to solve, mainly about developers leaving the forum and AG.net no longer being the one-stop resource about audio games.

Finally, while I value the existence of an off-topic area, since it isn't nor shouldn't be the main focus of the forum, it should be at the lowest priority for backing up in case of migration and/or maintenance tasks, deleting its contents entirely in case of extreme need.

The problem is not political discussions, nore religious discussions, in my opinion. The root of the problem... is that people don't, cannot, control themselves. Look at it like this, say political, religious discussions get banned. I guarantee you, it'll only be a matter of time before people, once again, lose control over some other form of discussion, maybe piracy, maybe that you should only play x game, maybe that x game is a clone... Need I go on? Banning discussion of topics is just, figuratively speaking, putting a bandage over the wound, it’s in no way curing said wound, the problem is not being solved. Hell, how many times have I seen a political topic and I just go... Not my thing, next? A hell of a lot. It's all down to self control, really.  I get the, let's ban x. On the surface, it is logical, however when you look deeper, as I said, if its not politics or religion, its only a matter of time before once again, people lose control and flame war a topic like flies on shit. So why not just... ya no, crate a room just for politics etc? And if you don't want to see those types of threads, either s,kip passed, or don't go into the politics room or... providing the software of the forum was more advanced than what it is, mute, block posts from that type, so you don't see them in your feed? Again that would require probably migrating to a new forum, or a major overhall of this one to be able to do this but, you get my point.
C mean think about it. If we, as a comunity on this forum are already heading in the direction of, banning topicks because people are tired of them; again back to what I said about people not having control of themselves... What's next? Oh someone mentioned Jesus christ in a post and i'm agnostic... how dare they! Ban this word from the forum immediately! Or how about, oh someone asked a question or has doubts about mac computers... Oh my god the nerve! almost everyone has windows! this is irrelevant! ban this discussion of macs immediately as only pc stuff can be discussed! Mainstream games? Oh no those are not allowed! this is exclusively a forum for audio games!  let's ban discussion of mainstream games!
Get my point? It'll start with banning one thing, I.e, politics, but again, given people's lack of control and apparent inability to discuss things in this forum without turning the topic into a shitstorm... its going to go from, let's ban politics to, let's ban the smallest little thing because oh my god I cannot handle it! i cannot tolerate it at all! Kind of thing.

@18 Re: Goldwave. Not exactly what I meant by using GW as a file explorer. I still use it to preview audio files. I mean, when I was a kid, I ended up screwing my computer in such a way where I could no longer tell what was in a list in Windows Explorer because NVDA wouldn't read it properly. Instead of just downloading Explorer 2 or something similar, I would open Goldwave and use the Open dialogue to explore files and open programs. Yes, you can do that, but it's kind of weird and clunky.

Really bad take. Banning discussions about inaccessible products is very different from banning discussions about politics. One is relevant to the forum, one is not. There are a practically unlimited number of places to discuss politics/religion. The same can not be said about discussions related to accessibility.

"If we start restricting topics, where do we stop?"

Ban discussions about politics and religion and stop after that. It's not difficult.

How about, let's not try to restrict the freedom of speech here unless it's actually illegal? If you don't like what people are talking about, don't go into the topic, or if the title is unclear, read the first few posts, figure out what it's about and GTFO. The minority who feel that banning political topics is a great and wonderful idea are the same people who clearly and obviously have no ability to control themselves. If they did, they wouldn't be calling for a restriction of speech, now would they?
The argument that "this is a forum for audio games so we shouldn't talk about anything else" is disingenuous and a Black-and-White Fallacy. Cut it out. I'm pretty positive that if those who can't control themselves would actually learn how to do so and would actually then do so, much of this supposed problem would vanish. Or banning them for a good long time would also do the trick. The internet -- and this forum -- should not be required to cater to the whims of a few (very toxic) individuals. This isn't your personal echo chamber. If someone wants to talk about politics or religion, then they should be allowed to do so. Simple as that.
As for this pole, it's bullshit. I hold it in contempt because I highly doubt the supposed majority is representative of the actual opinion of the forum at all. Thus, whatever it's outcome may be is absolutely meaningless.

Alas, this is kind of the best data collection method we've got. I actually like @21's idea. I do like just only regulating speech that's illegal, but right now, this forum has rules of decorum. With Exodus's thoughts, we could have both if we could figure out the technical way to do it. Then we could have the main forum, where decorum is enforced, and the more political forum where Mods really just deal in what could get the forum in trouble. I.E. that which is illegal.

@Ethin
I don't think it's a great and wonderful idea to ban those things. I wish it didn't have to be done at all. But because as you said, people can't control them selves, which applies both to people starting the threads and those responding, I don't think we need it here especially when we don't have enough consistent moderation to properly handle it.
You can do all the arguing you want on most any other major platform. Why is it so wrong that some people wish this particular corner of the internet could be specifically about the subject it was made for, rather than bringing all the inshitification from the rest of the internet here as well. Does everywhere have to suck just because allot of bigger places do? After all, it's not like we're all going to change our ways over night, even if we should still try...
Call that a black and white fallacy if you want. But IMO this place would have been better without an off topic room having ever been added. No it wouldn't fix everything, but it would be easier to moderate at least, which would help with the remaining crap.
And I'm a bit surprised you're even arguing about free speech when you know this is a private entity where free speech was never a given anyway. I'm generally for free speech as well, but not everywhere all the time. If most free speech is making people more miserable while not getting anything of value done, then I think it's fair for people to restrict it (as little as possible and with actual thought behind it of course) in more private places. And I'm sure you have your cutoff for it as well. People just have different points at which they feel that curbing free speech (in a non vital space and not severely) is justifiable. Compared to the shit some people are trying to pull, this is tiny, we're not trying to target one side over another, and I don't see you complaining about the hate speech rules which also curb free speech.

As for the poll though. You said it much more harshly than I would have, but I don't think it's very helpful either. It was put up way too soon after the latest incident, which isn't fair, and it's only open to registered users I believe. It also wasn't done by the mods, which makes it unofficial.

@40 it isn't that people don't care about your suggestions; but as defender pointed out, they are not in an official capacity. When a user posts something, we may get a short word from the mods, but typically it doesn't change the situation. Some of your actions could also be seen as backseat moderating. Here is the part where I be hypocritical. I think the best thing to do in these situations is ask the mods privately if they can make a topic addressing the situation. I certainly didn't do that when asking about fireball's ban, or any time at all actually. So i get it isn't the first option that crosses people's mind. But ideally we probably should ask the mods in private if it is worth bringing the issue to the public, and who should do it.

Nah it's the best room.

Im sure if you remove off topic the mod will have a bunch of topic to delete when users ask random question on general game disgussions.

@48, yes, I was far too harsh. This toxic drama is getting on my nerves, particularly given it's the same minority making the same noise again and again and again (and as you said this topic is pretty much a form of backseat moderation). I said what I said (though I could've been far less harsh about it) because these poles don't accurately represent the communities actual intent or desires. At most they get a few hundred votes, if your lucky, and that's it. I've no doubt that there are far more active members who don't know this pole exists, or who don't care, so every time this pole (or similar) has been tried, you essentially get the same responses with little variability, from the same people. The other political topic going off the rails isn't helping this situation either. But yes, I was harsher than I needed to be.