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.
In September 2024, according to Russian media Kommersant, Russian regulator Roskomnadzor was planning to block the platform. One day later, Discord allowed another server to be created and began assisting with moderation on it. They additionally discovered 165 cases of prosecution for the sharing of child sexual exploitation material on the platform. In June 2023, NBC News reported that they had identified 35 cases of adults being charged with “kidnapping, grooming, or sexual assault” that allegedly involved the platform. In July 2018, Discord updated its terms of service to ban drawn pornography with underage subjects. CNN has reported that Discord has had problems with sexual exploitation of children and young teenagers on its platform.
- After a fivefold increase in employees between 2020 and 2024, the company laid off 17%, or 170 employees, in January 2024.
- Discord launches an in-game overlay for PC, letting players interact with their friends without leaving their game, and adds a friends list to let people talk outside of servers.
- They additionally discovered 165 cases of prosecution for the sharing of child sexual exploitation material on the platform.
- Discord is an instant messaging and VoIP social platform that allows communication through voice calls, video calls, text messaging, and media.
- Jason Citron and Guy Raz talk about Jason’s early career and how Discord grew to become the platform it is today.
Developer tools and bots
- Discord told the press that the server was deleted by moderators shortly after the shooting.
- In July 2018, Discord updated its terms of service to ban drawn pornography with underage subjects.
- In September 2021, Google sent cease and desist notices to the developers of two of the most popular music bots used on Discord—Groovy and Rythm—which were used on an estimated 36 million servers in total.
- These bots allowed users to request and play songs in a voice channel, taking the songs from YouTube ad-free.
- For teens and gamers, Discord has become their entire online social lives.
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
In September 2019, Discord announced that it was ending its free game service in October 2019 as they found too few people were playing the games offered. While these features somewhat mimic the livestreaming capabilities of platforms like Twitch, the company does not plan to compete with these services, as these features were made for small groups. Roles can, among other things, determine which channels users have access to, change users’ colors, and designate a server’s moderation team. Users can create servers for free, manage their public visibility, and create voice channels, text channels, and categories to sort the channels into.
Discord captured users who were leaving Facebook and other platforms due to privacy concerns. Among other planned changes was to reduce the number of gaming in-jokes it used within the client, improving the user onboarding experience, and increasing server capacity and reliability. 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. Microsoft announced in April 2018 that it would provide Discord support for Xbox Live users, allowing them to link their Discord and Xbox Live accounts so that they can connect with their Xbox Live friends list through Discord.
Video calls and streaming
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.
Download for mobile
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.
A verified server is moderated by its developers’ or publishers’ own moderation team. In 2023, the server for Midjourney reached over 15 million members, making it the largest server on Discord. The previously largest known Discord server was Snowsgiving 2021, an chicken road game download official Discord-controlled server made for the 2021 winter holiday season. The Moroccan protests at the end of the same month also originated on Discord, using the platform for organising and public statements. In early September 2025, Discord was used heavily in the 2025 Nepal protests and to help elect a new prime minister even if Discord was formerly banned in Nepal along with social media except for TikTok.
YOU CAN’T SCROLL ANYMORE.BETTER GO CHAT.
Also in March 2019, Discord removed the digital storefront, instead choosing to focus on the Nitro subscription and having direct sales be done through developer’s own servers. This will include a “First on Discord” featured set of games that their developers attest to Discord’s help in getting launched, giving these games 90 days of exclusivity on the Discord marketplace. Until mid-2023, to allow multiple users to use the same username, each user was assigned a four-digit number called a “discriminator” (colloquially a “Discord tag”), prefixed with “#”, which was added to the end of their username. Initially, users could search for open Stage Channels relevant to their interests through a Stage Discovery tool, which was discontinued in October 2021.
This led to the development of a chat service with a focus on user friendliness with minimal impact on performance. According to Citron, during the development process, he noticed how difficult it was for his team to work out tactics in games like Final Fantasy XIV and League of Legends using available voice over IP (VoIP) software. It is primarily used by gamers, although the share of users interested in other topics is growing. Discord doubles-down on its mission to be the best place to hang out before, during, and after playing games. Jason & Stan loved playing games but couldn’t find a reliable way to talk while playing online. Watch videos, play built-in games, listen to music, or just scroll together and spam memes.
Watch the video to learn more about the social platform for all of gaming, where over 200 million friends and communities chat over text, voice, and video calls every month. The company observed that while the bulk of its servers are used for gaming-related purposes, a small number have been created by users for non-gaming activities, like stock trading, fantasy football, and other shared interest groups. A Social SDK was released in March 2025 which will allow games to incorporate Discord’s social features into games and assist with providing in-game communications between Discord and non-Discord users. Discord is a voice, video, and text communication platform used by over two hundred million people to hang out and play games with their friends.
Discord releases Go Live, letting players stream their favorite games to their server friends in just a few clicks. Discord launches an in-game overlay for PC, letting players interact with their friends without leaving their game, and adds a friends list to let people talk outside of servers. Some of the game’s features, such as built-in voice chat, text chat and forums, help lay the groundwork for what’s next… Seamlessly text, call, video chat, and play games, all in one group chat.
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.
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.
Channels may be used either for voice chat and streaming or for instant messaging and file sharing, or both. Most servers have a limit of 250,000 members, but this limit can be raised if the server owner contacts Discord. 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. The cause of this record was the Discord client playing the announcement video on loop in the app itself. They added new features such as dark mode for OLED screens, voice messages, and new icons. In September 2021, Google sent cease and desist notices to the developers of two of the most popular music bots used on Discord—Groovy and Rythm—which were used on an estimated 36 million servers in total.
Group chat that’s all fun & games
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.
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.