Discord is a popular free chat platform for video game communities. It is a digital distribution and VoIP application which is specially designed to be specialized in video, image, text and audio chats between users of a chat channel. It runs on Android, Windows, iOS, macOS, and Linux along with web browsers. On 21st July, in the year 2019, it had around 250 million users. If you have played online games, then you must be familiarized with Discord as it is just like Skype of gamers.
Discord is considered to be better than other VoIP groups because it can be possible to talk to your friends while playing the game, and it is best because one can also run this application in the browser. It helps to change mic levels and can also provide low latency of voice chat. It is easier to manage large groups of people by using Discord server.
Inception
Jason Citron was the person who came up with Discord’s idea, and he founded OpenFeint, which is a social platform for gaming. In the year 2011, he sold it to GREE in $104 million. He used this money to found HAMMER & CHISEL, which is a game development studio after one year. In the year 2014, FATES FOREVER was released, which was the first product of them. This wasn’t commercially successful, and Citron noticed that it was quite challenging to manage teamwork in the LoL or Final fantasy games.
He found that VoIP software asks the players to type their IP addresses, but Skype had security issues. So, he decided to develop a safer and friendlier chat service, which is based on modern advanced technology. YouWeb’s 9+ incubator provided additional funding to HAMMER & CHISEL to develop Discord. On 13th May in the year 2015, Discord was released publicly.
As per Citron, they only pushed this software into Reddit communities and then found out that certain subreddit forums replaced IRC servers with Discords. Among LAN tournaments and esports games, Discord became quite popular. In the year 2016, the company was able to raise around $20 million of funding for this software, and it has investors like American multinational mass media company WARNER MEDIA. In the year 2019, the company sold shares to the Warner Media Investment group. In the year 2018, the company raised around $150 million in $2 billion in valuation funding.
Evolution
The company uses metaphors of channels and servers similar to relay internet chat, and the users are allowed to create a server on this software. They can manage their access and public visibility. This software comes at zero cost, and the developers decided to find a way to get it monetized. With paid customizations like stickers and emojis, the first paid software titled Discord Nitro Classic was launched in January 2017.
It had a $4.99 subscription fee per month, and users were able to get emojis, custom avatars, and a lot more benefits. On 1st January 2020, Discord Nitro has been released, and the people who were subscribers of Discord Nitro Classic were able to get Discord Nitro for one whole year. The developers of this software have also claimed that they will keep looking for monetization options, but the software will not lose its roots and core.
In August 2017, screen sharing and video calls were added in Discord for the first time. During October 2017, Discord provided server verification to the game publishers, content creators, and developers to make them display their official status. In April 2018, Microsoft announced that it would provide support to Discord for XBOX live users and will allow them to link their Discord with the Xbox account.
Awards and achievements
The company hasn’t won any awards until now, but it has been able to grow fast within four years. Although the developer had released a few other software more accessible, which weren’t famous earlier but eventually, Discord came out to be an achievement of its developer because people all across the world are using Discord in huge numbers.
Net worth of Discord in 2024
As Discord has become the biggest chat platform for gaming in the world, it has around 200 million users, and now the company’s value is about $2.5 billion as of November 2024. In the year 2018, Discord company launched storefront game beta, which allowed users to buy a set of games from this service.
Discord Nitro subscribers started gaining access to these sets of games in their subscription. The price of Nitro Discord jumped from $4.99 to $9.99 per month. Nitro Classic is cheaper among the users, and it also had some perks but didn’t have games like that of Nitro. EPIC GAMES STORE was launched, and it took a 12% cut of the game’s profit. In 2018,
Discord announced that it would reduce its profit cut to only 10%. To support developers, Discord also allowed publishers and developers to run their servers to offer games on their server, and Discord will manage the distribution and payment processing. In September 2019, Discord decided to end its free gaming service because there were rare people who played offered games. As of now, the Digital storefront of the company will stay operational.
Not only the gamers love to use Discord, but the streamers also get benefits with it. It can be possible to manage your YouTube audience on Discord as it will allow you to get more viewers, and it also hides all the invitation codes. One can sync Discord with the YouTube account, and that’s why it is a one-stop solution for the interaction with your followers. The users also use Discord Nitro which is an upgraded version of this app.
The bots provided by Discord are quite popular in the market among gamers. On the 4th anniversary celebration of Discord in 2019, it was announced that this software had around 250 million users registered on mobile and web platforms. The company talked about the famous verified servers, including PUBG Mobile, Clash Royale, Rainbow 6, Minecraft, Spellbreak, and Fornite.