The ability to purchase stickers was discontinued, and users who had done so were refunded. In October 2018, “Discord Nitro” was renamed “Discord Nitro Classic” with the introduction of the new “Discord Nitro”, which cost $9.99 and included access to free browser games through the Discord game store. In spring 2022, Discord released an official “app directory” where server owners can add bots to their servers in-Discord. As of 2021,update there are around 430,000 total bots active in estimated 30% of all servers. This integration is commonly used to allow players to join each other’s games through Discord or to display information about a player’s game progression in their Discord profile.
According to Citron, they made no specific moves to target any specific audience, but some gaming-related subreddits quickly began to replace their IRC links with Discord links. Discord was publicly released in May 2015 under the domain name discordapp.com. In addition, “Discord in the gaming community” was the problem they wished to solve. Citron sold OpenFeint to GREE in 2011 for US$104 million, which he used to found Hammer & Chisel, a game development studio, in 2012. Jason Citron and Guy Raz talk about Jason’s early career and how Discord grew to become the platform it is today. Jason Citron alongside Anjney Midha shares insights on the shift from gamer to developer and more.
The Discord Story
For supported games, you can see what modes or characters your friends are playing and directly join up. Discord is great for playing games and chilling with friends, or even building a worldwide community. Talk, play, and hang out with friends around the world over voice, video, or text. On January 27, 2021, Discord banned the r/WallStreetBets server during the GameStop short squeeze, citing “hateful and discriminatory content”, which users found contentious. Approximately 30 minutes before the shooting, several users were invited by Gendron to view the server and read the messages. Citron stated that servers found to be engaged in illegal activities or violations of the terms of service would be shut down, but would not disclose any examples.
Discord has worked with the Southern Poverty Law Center to identify hateful groups using Discord and ban those groups from the service. Discord gained popularity with the alt-right due to the pseudonymity and privacy offered by Discord’s service. A study published in New Media & Society criticized Discord’s offloading of server search functions to unmoderated third-party apps, saying that it facilitates hateful communities to find new audience. Discord has a Trust and Safety department, which is tasked with responding to user reports.
Use by extremist users and groups
We’re continuing to make Discord the best, most reliable platform to talk and play for players on PC, mobile, and console. Sakhnini brings deep gaming industry experience from leadership roles at Activision Blizzard and King. Discord teams up with PlayStation for account linking support, allowing people on Discord to show off what they’re playing on their PlayStation 5 console. Discord’s Rich Presence API releases, letting players display what they’re doing in-game, directly on Discord.
Citron posted mockup images of Discord around the proposed Web3 principles with integrated cryptocurrency and non-fungible token support in November 2021, leading to criticism from its user base. From this, the company secured an additional $500 million in further investments in September 2021. Citron says they are still in talks with several potential buyers, including all major gaming console manufacturers. In May 2021, Discord rebranded its game controller-shaped logo “Clyde” in celebration of its sixth anniversary. An inside source called this one of the first steps for the company toward an initial public offering, though Citron had said earlier in the month that he was not considering taking the company public.
What is discord?
Discord communities are organized into discrete collections of channels called servers. In September 2025, Discord’s customer services, which are provided by Zendesk, suffered a data breach, which notably exposed images of users’ government-issued IDs used to appeal age estimations. Two weeks later, Discord partnered with YouTube to test a “Watch Together” feature, which allows Discord users to watch YouTube videos together. These bots allowed users to request and play songs in a voice channel, taking the songs from YouTube ad-free.
User profiles
- For its WebRTC transport of voice and video, it uses dedicated server infrastructure from Datapacket.
- Bring Discord with you and chat whenever, have fun with friends, or just see what’s up.
- From this, the company secured an additional $500 million in further investments in September 2021.
Discord, after long-awaited excitement and hype, releases video chat and screen share features to all users in DMs and Group DMs. Use Discord to easily talk while playing your favorite PC games, show what you’re playing as your status, and stream your games to your friends. Discord responded by closing servers that supported the alt-right and far-right, and banning users who had participated. Another way Discord makes money is through a 10% commission as the distribution fee from all games sold through game developers’ verified servers. In June 2019, Discord introduced Server Boosts, a way to benefit specific servers by purchasing a “boost” for it, with enough boosts granting various benefits for the users in that particular server.
- The company benefited from relationships with Twitch streamers and subreddit communities for Diablo and World of Warcraft.
- One day later, Discord allowed another server to be created and began assisting with moderation on it.
- In June 2020, Discord announced it was shifting focus away from video gaming specifically to a more all-purpose communication and chat client for all functions, revealing its new slogan “Your place to talk”, along with a revised website.
- Although they are referred to as servers on the front end, they are called “guilds” in the developer documentation, to distinguish themselves from physical computer servers.
- For supported games, you can see what modes or characters your friends are playing and directly join up.
A cheaper service called ‘Nitro Classic’ was also released that has the same perks as Nitro but does not include free games. Video calling and screen sharing were added in October 2017, allowing users to create private video calls with up to 10 users, later increased to 50 due to the increased popularity of video calling during the COVID-19 pandemic. Users selected their new usernames in priority based on how early they registered for Discord, Nitro status, and ownership of partner and verified servers. Discord launched Stage Channels in May 2021, a feature similar to Clubhouse which allows for live, moderated channels, for audio talks, discussions, and other uses, which can further be potentially gated to only invited or ticketed users. Verified servers, like verified accounts on social media sites, have badges to mark them as official communities. Starting October 2017, Discord allows game developers and publishers to verify their servers.
Video calls and streaming
Easily switch between devices and use tools to manage multiple group chats with friends. Try out the newest features before they launch by using our Public Test Build. Age Restricted channels are blocked on devices running Apple’s iOS to comply with their App Store’s guidelines.
The decision was made following the murder of two women in Istanbul by a 19-year old Discord user who allegedly garnered support for his action from Discord users before he took his own life on 4 October 2024. Some Discord users subsequently criticized chicken road game download the moderation staff for selectively allowing “cub” content, or underage pornographic furry artwork, under the same guidelines. Prior to Robinson’s arrest, users in the group had also exchanged messages comparing supposed images of the shooter to Robinson, who joked he was being framed by a doppelgänger.
It will possibly apply in Australia when the social media ban for under 16 came into force by 10 December 2025. Chinese police will find and interrogate people who make sensitive comments on the platform. Roskomnadzor demanded that the platform remove 947 posts containing illegal content and imposed a fine in the amount of 3.5 million rubles (US$37,493).
Discord is a persistent group chat software, based on an eventually consistent database architecture. These plugins augment existing functionality or add features that are not offered by Discord. Following the launch of the Epic Games Store, which challenged Valve’s Steam storefront by only taking a 12% cut of game revenue, Discord announced in December 2018 that it would reduce its own revenue cut to 10%. A user can share their entire screen, or a specific application, and others in that channel can choose to watch the stream. In June 2021, Discord added a feature that allows the user to add an about me section to their profile, as well as a custom colored banner at the top of their profile.
According to Citron, the increased valuation was due to the shift away from “broadcast wide-open social media communication services to more small, intimate places”, as well as increased usage during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among those investing in the company was Sony Interactive Entertainment; the company said it intended to integrate a portion of Discord’s services into the PlayStation Network by 2022. Their first product was Fates Forever, released in 2014, which Citron anticipated to be the first multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game on mobile platforms, but it was not commercially successful. For teens and gamers, Discord has become their entire online social lives. Jason Citron establishes a new studio, Phoenix Guild, to help bring people together around games.
As of 2024,update Discord has about 150 million monthly active users and 19 million weekly active servers. Discord is an instant messaging and VoIP social platform that allows communication through voice calls, video calls, text messaging, and media. We’re building Discord to be the perfect place to talk while playing games on any platform, no matter what device you play on. Discord introduces voice chat support for PS5 consoles and reveals Activities, a way to play games directly in Discord.
In October 2022, the “Discord Nitro Classic” subscription tier was replaced by a $2.99 “Discord Nitro Basic”, which features a subset of features from the $9.99 “Nitro” tier. In January 2017, the first paid subscription and features were released with “Discord Nitro Classic” (originally released as “Discord Nitro”). The desktop client is built on the Electron software framework using web technologies, which allows it to be multi-platform and operate as an installed application on personal computers. The infrastructure was migrated to Apache Cassandra when the platform reached a billion messages, then later migrated to ScyllaDB when it reached a trillion messages.
During the Gen Z protests that spread throughout 2025, many demonstrations were organized on the platform. Citron wrote this move was in anticipation of making Discord a publicly traded company. However, more than 1.3 billion views were removed 2 days later after YouTube fixed the views count, and no records were broken by the Discord Loot Boxes video. On April Fool’s 2024, Discord accidentally broke the record of the most viewed YouTube video in 24 hours. After a fivefold increase in employees between 2020 and 2024, the company laid off 17%, or 170 employees, in January 2024. The documents, distributed on a Minecraft Discord server as photos, detailed the state of the Russo-Ukrainian war, surveillance of allied and adversarial nations, and indicated cracks in alliances with nations aligned with the United States.