Since I have administrated and moderated a community of thousands in the past, I figure I should provide some observations and insights on the matter for both sides.
As communities grow, there is always a development of a perception that there is a superiority if there are only a few people running the community- there lacks diversity in judgement, simply by the limited number of people in charge and it is easy for users to target that dynamic.
One way to solve it is by creating more moderators and developing a system of checks and balances, so that doing more regulation work can be enforced.
The problem with this approach is that it will stifle the communities expression and give the impression of a suppression-like mood. It will put more walls between people and essentially drive people out of the community since they can easily find other channels elsewhere to communicate more freely. I've seen communities decline because of this.
Places like Discord offer places where communication can be more free and timely- where it often is more about lifestyle and person to person interaction- it is more intimate than a forum and can be a place where you feel more included and part of a family. This obviously can become more heated and spontaneous because of the realtime nature of it, but that's life and humans have emotions, so it is better to learn how to deal with your emotions and how to interpret other's emotions than to simply suppress them, etc..
Anyways- I'm concerned that Scirra might be going down a path of more regulatory measures, based on this thread post. I could be wrong though- I could be taking all this out of context since I don't visit the discord channel..
I think a better way to handle this would have been to find some people to act as moderators/middle men, as such discussions coming from a limited set of people from Scirra can appear unfavorably for them. If they do go that route, then I'd expect to see more enforcement of rules, etc, and the community to decrease in size. Worse case scenario is they begin to only allow paid subscribers access to the community forum.
Also, the past talk of wanting to create ways to engage the community- If they do this, I expect more official events and things like that, which in turn stress more regulatory type tactics, which will in turn also lead to impressions of misjudgement and bad decision making, etc. I see it happen all the time in other communities, and the results are predictable.
Another point I want to mention is that longer lasting users tend to have more gripes or reasons for expressing themselves, and put more effort into being heard, etc. So if Scirra is tired of listening, then it will eventually leave them with a community that is younger and less experienced, and satisfied with new flashy things that haven't been tested yet, etc..
Scirra doesn't have to respond to everyone, and everyone's requests won't be answered- there's only so much time and people have to choose where to spend their focus, etc.
Also, pushing away people won't solve anything anyways, there will always be new users that haven't learnt how to communicate that well, or don't have as much life experience or foresight, etc.. so I think it is healthy to encourage people to get it out their system, and maybe there'd be more good that comes from it. Yeah some people will utterly hate something, they probably have good reason to hate it. Others will love stuff.. It's a balance, and we don't need to be suppressing either side, because it just suppresses both in the end because everyone loves and hates different things at different times.
I generally think that banning people should be avoided unless it's harming people. People act crazy from time to time- and that's just human nature. It happens. It's better to take those instances and try to be the better person in it and grow your character and be an example for others, and by doing so others will learn how to better themselves rather than just ignore others and shun them.