Rumour: Discord to be purchased by Microsoft

Knoyleo wrote:
Karl_ wrote:
Knoyleo wrote:I've tried using the GRcade discord server as well, but I'm just not sure why you wouldn't just post on here instead of there?

Real-time notifications and easy access to voice-chat, basically. It's pretty useful for saying "I'm playing Apex now, let's group up". You can then ping everyone that's online that's registered an interest in that game and voice-chat to any who respond.

I didn't even realise it did voice chat.
I can definitely see more benefit to it there, I assume this would be on place of something like the old mumble server?

It also does video chat, screen sharing and you can even live stream games on it too.

It's unfortunate that Discord won out because Mumble is free and open source, but I guess Discord having push notifications is a big factor. Discord started out as VoIP for games so pretty much was a direct Mumble competitor even if it has expanded since then.

Discord wasn’t ever just a VoIP application. Slack found the sweet spot for how a modern group messaging application should work, being essentially a next-gen IRC. Discord saw that, made it for gaming and thus added voice channels in the process. And it can’t be understated how much they absolutely nailed it. All of their primary features (chat, voice, video, streaming) are consistently best-in-class.

Discord’s take on how people want to connect with eachother was so *correct* that Microsoft launched Teams, a copycat, to supersede strawberry floating Skype. And they’ve been constantly playing catch-up with the quality of their features.

The acquisition makes sense for Microsoft if they can just take the Discord product and reskin it as Teams for B2B customers to have a real shot at dethroning Zoom post-pandemic. But I also think they’d be the ones least likely to strawberry float with the current product, and leave it there untouched as a quality-of-life, “goodwill” project for them.

Like, I don’t know how much of their GitHub buyout affected the under-the-hood machinations of Azure DevOps, but there was a lot of doom and gloom at the time around how GitHub would be ruined, and it’s just as great as it ever was.

Minecraft, Github and Linkedin were all left to continue more or less as they were before MS acquired them , I think they've learned their lesson.

I always wondered why the GR discord was so quiet when it's perfectly suited to a community like this, but now I know :lol:

For those suggesting that the Discord is quiet - what are you expecting to see happen on there that isn't?

I thought it was just a voice chat thing which is why we use it for the twitchcast

Photek wrote:Minecraft, Github and Linkedin were all left to continue more or less as they were before MS acquired them , I think they've learned their lesson.

Minecraft was the biggest gaming IP in the world when they acquired it and making tons of money, while LinkedIn makes plenty of money through the ads and employer/recruiter plans. It’s not really a like for like comparison.

The fear most people have is that a buyer, Microsoft or otherwise, would ruin Discord by making it profitable, which it absolutely totally isn’t. GitHub is about the only “assurance” that Microsoft could do good by the users, but who knows? It’s still better them than the other possibilities, but I wouldn’t use Minecraft or LinkedIn as proof that Discord will be ok.

Discord is like a usable Slack

I use slack for work and it is absolutely fine, I don't see how it's really any different to discord tbh. Comparing the browser versions that is.

coldspice wrote:I always wondered why the GR discord was so quiet when it's perfectly suited to a community like this, but now I know

Pretty much lol

Knoyleo wrote:I still don't get discord. I've got access to a few different servers largely through patreons I support, but it feels like being added to hundreds of group WhatsApp chats all at once, so I just turned off notifications and now I never use it again.

^ the facts

Buffalo wrote:
Knoyleo wrote:I still don't get discord. I've got access to a few different servers largely through patreons I support, but it feels like being added to hundreds of group WhatsApp chats all at once, so I just turned off notifications and now I never use it again.

^ the facts

Yeah same.

I get that it’s popular with the yoof but how can it possibly be worth anything like 10 billion.

[quote="Jenuall"]For those suggesting that the Discord is quiet - what are you expecting to see happen on there that isn't?[/quote]

Nothing different really, just a higher level of activity. It would be useful for organising multiplayer stuff, plus the guys who stream could make use of it. I've generally found though, the servers I'm in are successful when they have a clear structure and purpose. Could also be that the fact I'm most active in wrestling Discords is because there are events that happen that everyone watches simultaneously and that type of thing gives it more of a focus.

A GR discord could potentially canabalise a lot the forum's activity though, so maybe its current role is a good balance.

EDIT: I had multiple issues writing that post on mobile and quoting seems to have broken. If I were much more clever than I really am, this would have been an intentional display of how reliant we are on redundant platforms :shifty:

Also, as long as they don't make changes to the API and/or restrict not creation, I'm happy.

Is it like a chat room then?

Victor Mildew wrote:Is it like a chat room then?

Yes

Discord is good for small communities or friends, then I see game companies on Twitter celebrating having 60k users or whatever in their Discord and I have no idea how that works. Is it just like a constant, unreadable twitch chat at that point?

Knoyleo wrote:I'll be in a discord for a youtube channel making cool animations or something, but there'll be all these rooms to discuss recipes, or post gooseberry fool memes, and it's just odd to me why that discussion is happening there.

It's not really any different to people coming to a games forum and then posting in loads of other topics about food recipes or youtube videos and so on. People came to gamesradar back in the day and enjoyed the chat and stuck around. Discord is exactly the same really, people join a discord or a person's content and community they enjoy and then chat about various things. I don't see how you find it so far removed to a games forum.

But forums have structure, users creating topics to manage the chat - discord is just one long stream of chat that feel impenetrable

Rumour: Discord to be purchased by Microsoft

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