Microsoft gets ready to kill Skype Classic once again: 'This time we mean it'

Skype 7 (aka Classic) has finally run out of lives. Microsoft yesterday announced plans to kill it off once and for all in an update to a two-month-old blog-post.

In what a cynic might suggest was done in a way designed to avoid too much attention, the update to the original post warned that support for Skype 7 on desktop devices would end on 1 November with mobile and tablet devices following suit on 15 November.

Microsoft insisted that “We’re continuing to work on your most requested features” and pointed to call recording and the upcoming status changes due in Skype 8. It then suggested that users hightailed it to the latest version in order to “avoid any interruption”. No mention was made of the Windows 10 UWP incarnation.

As far as “requested features” are concerned, the top request in Skype’s UserVoice forum is “Bring back all the configuration/options possibilities we know from the classic skype version”. The third most requested feature is a return of multiple chat windows by a poster who went on the observe “This version sucks!”

Oh dear.

The original shutdown date for Skype 7 was 1 September, but Microsoft called off the executioner and promised that the venerable platform would be supported “for some time”.

“Some time” soon became “limited time” in a 31 August update of the original blog post. And now we have an almost definitive date since users “may be able to use older versions for a little while”, according to Microsoft.

So you have some time to hold hands with the beloved UI, maybe sit around the campfire and sing some songs about the good times before a sad-faced Microsoft engineer takes an axe to the servers.

Director of design for Skype, Peter Skillman, usually prolific on Twitter, was silent on the new date. Skillman had tried to explain the reasons behind the closure when it was first announced back in July, pointing at bogeyman du jour, GDPR. Those reasons are unlikely to have gone away.

GDPR. T1 skype is will not be compliant with worldwide approaches for data structure/protection in all countries. It's still REALLY safe, but T2 has a higher bar.

— peter skillman (@peterskillman) July 29, 2018

So, farewell then, Skype Classic. We knew ye all too well. ®