I don't say that we don't need it, I say that we can't have it because it will damage the forum, like it happened in the past.
This is what happened last time:
In the beginning it was nice, then people started to have weird uninteresting subjects (for the more mature members, staff included). The staff stopped looking in the forums. Things got out of control, and the staff didn't fixed it because they never came anymore. People started to complain. Staff investigated, took some actions, but it didn't helped. Staff had a meeting. Staff removed off-topic forum, and replaced it by a shoutbox. The shoutbox has been replaced by the IRC channel because its better moderated and allows more communication options, as its realtime.