General Gaming Discord is burning down from the inside, and the reason is the hiring of ex-Meta/Facebook management

[CitizenVectron]

Basically, Discord has hired a bunch of ex-Social Media management, and they are churning the company with power struggles and flexes, creating a toxic culture. This explains Discord's recent shift to be more social media-like.

 

Sucks, because Discord is great at what it does (teamspeak/chat replacement), but like Imgur and other platforms, it's trying to become something that people don't seem to want.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

This is what happens when businessmen take over something built for and beloved by nerds. The management doesn’t care about the original audience and wants to attract a wider audience and end up ruining the product for the people that liked it first. 

[Paperclyp]

That sucks! My gripes with Discord are primarily with the UI - I just find it unwieldy and confusing, but fully recognize it might be a sign of the world passing me by. But I do find it to be really unintuitive which sucks since it’s such a great tool. Last thing I need in it is a bunch of social media bs.

[Bacon]

My problem with Discord is that people used it wrong. Many use it as a forum or as a personal website. There is nothing more infuriating than searching for information or guides within a live chat service.

[TwinIon]

While I don't know anything about the culture at Discord, I do think that some huge changes seem inevitable as the service moves out of VC funded growth mode.

 

I can't find anything to suggest that Nitro subs cover anything close to their burn rate, and while I love the idea of an optional subscription social service succeeding, we haven't seen one yet. If they want to start justifying the hundreds of millions raised, they need to find new ways to monetize and they need to make big changes to make it more accessible to a wider audience. User growth has slowed considerably, which is not a good place for it to be pre-IPO.

 

One of those reviews mentions that they've been in hyper growth mode but haven't been getting the growth, and that's essentially the problem. They've built a great product for specific use cases, but I'm sure the VCs are not happy with Discord being IRC/Teamspeak for the 2020s.

[AshsToAshs]

42 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

While I don't know anything about the culture at Discord, I do think that some huge changes seem inevitable as the service moves out of VC funded growth mode.

 

I can't find anything to suggest that Nitro subs cover anything close to their burn rate, and while I love the idea of an optional subscription social service succeeding, we haven't seen one yet. If they want to start justifying the hundreds of millions raised, they need to find new ways to monetize and they need to make big changes to make it more accessible to a wider audience. User growth has slowed considerably, which is not a good place for it to be pre-IPO.

 

One of those reviews mentions that they've been in hyper growth mode but haven't been getting the growth, and that's essentially the problem. They've built a great product for specific use cases, but I'm sure the VCs are not happy with Discord being IRC/Teamspeak for the 2020s.

Agreed.

They have a massive user base, but not a great monetization model.

Anytime that happens, there is going to be some changes that are going to frustrate users. 

 

IMO I think it would have been smart of them to accept the $10B Microsoft buyout a couple of years ago.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

I haven't given Discord a single penny nor do I intend to!

 

[TwinIon]

20 minutes ago, AshsToAshs said:

IMO I think it would have been smart of them to accept the $10B Microsoft buyout a couple of years ago.

I forgot about that. Yeah, I imagine that's going to end up looking like a real blunder as more and more time goes by. Not that I'm confident that Discord would have been better under Microsoft, but they either need a lot more time to figure things out than their VCs will give them or they need to come to terms with not becoming a billion person app.

[Bacon]

21 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

I haven't given Discord a single penny nor do I intend to!

Same. It isn't a service I often use or have a need for. It is convenient for FFXIV pugs tho.

[Jason]

4 hours ago, Paperclyp said:

That sucks! My gripes with Discord are primarily with the UI - I just find it unwieldy and confusing, but fully recognize it might be a sign of the world passing me by. But I do find it to be really unintuitive which sucks since it’s such a great tool. Last thing I need in it is a bunch of social media bs.

 

It's really terrible once you're in more than a couple of servers.

 

You don't get push notifications on your phone if you have Discord open anywhere else, and between my work and home computers I usually have it open in a tab somewhere. This has caused me to miss time sensitive DMs on more than one occasion. Then if you're at the computer when the notification comes in, it just flashes and beeps at you but doesn't clearly indicate where the notification is coming from. There's an extremely non-obvious notification feed (it uses an icon that in no way hints that it's actually a notifications icon), but if you're in more than a couple of servers it's a fucking mess and good luck quickly finding where the most recent notification that was beeping at you came from. 

 

It's also garbage how you have to go hunting around for which channels have new messages. Other platforms like Cisco Webex will float conversations with new activity to the top of your feed, making it significantly easier to keep up with conversations. 

[Keyser_Soze]

5 hours ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

I haven't given Discord a single penny nor do I intend to!

 

Will you use one of your two super reactions on me?

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Just now, Keyser_Soze said:

 

Will you use one of your two super reactions on me?

 

What the hell are those?

[Keyser_Soze]

3 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

What the hell are those?

 

There are normal reactions to messages and SUPER reactions. If you pay they replenish but if you don't pay you get two of them ever! The super reaction is right next the normal one, you might even use it accidentally

 

https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/12102061808663-Reactions-and-Super-Reactions-FAQ

 

[cusideabelincoln]

29 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

There are normal reactions to messages and SUPER reactions. If you pay they replenish but if you don't pay you get two of them ever! The super reaction is right next the normal one, you might even use it accidentally

 

https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/12102061808663-Reactions-and-Super-Reactions-FAQ

 

 

Next should be a plugin for super reactions that activate the.... rumble... on your Xbox controller.

[Keyser_Soze]

4 minutes ago, cusideabelincoln said:

Next should be a plugin for super reactions that activate the.... rumble... on your Xbox controller.

 

Well teledildonics is the future.

[5timechamp]

On 6/12/2023 at 5:12 PM, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

I haven't given Discord a single penny nor do I intend to!

 

 

same…

hell im still not sure what Discords or Patreons are despite every damn youtube channel always mentioning it

[Kal-El814]

40 minutes ago, 5timechamp said:

 

same…

hell im still not sure what Discords or Patreons are despite every damn youtube channel always mentioning it

 

Discord: come talk to me and people who like me

Patreon: come give me money

[5timechamp]

2 hours ago, Kal-El814 said:

 

Discord: come talk to me and people who like me

Patreon: come give me money

 

So community Onlyfans lol.. without the nudity..  wow, and it actually works too.. so many people getting easy money and stuff for random ass content.. I wonder if they generate more than streamers.. Pat Robertson would be proud

[Keyser_Soze]

I mean supporting someone on Patreon is nothing to be ashamed of. The Nextlander Crew or Jeff Gerstmann wouldn't be doing their own thing without it.

[Kal-El814]

56 minutes ago, 5timechamp said:

 

So community Onlyfans lol.. without the nudity..  wow, and it actually works too.. so many people getting easy money and stuff for random ass content.. I wonder if they generate more than streamers.. Pat Robertson would be proud

 

I think this is kind of an uncharitable read of both OF and Patreon.

 

With Patreon, I don’t think there’s often people looking for parasocial relationships or direct contact with creators. The Patreons I sub to have allowed the people making stuff like podcasts or painting tutorials or whatever to have that be their full time job. They put out high quality content and I don’t mind paying less per month than I do for other services I use less or are far more niche.

 

I confess I don’t know much about OnlyFans but my understanding from talking to people who sub to adult content creators is somewhat similar; they want to support people who make content they like. I think there’s also a lot of people who sub specifically to interact with and increase their parasocial relationships with creators.

 

2 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

I mean supporting someone on Patreon is nothing to be ashamed of. The Nextlander Crew or Jeff Gerstmann wouldn't be doing their own thing without it.

 

Sex work is work too and I don’t think it’s shameful to support it.

[Bacon]

14 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

Sex work is work too and I don’t think it’s shameful to support it.

While I can't say I'm interested in regular ol' porn and nudes, I haven't yet, but I plan on subscribing to 3 ASMR Patreons, that produce both sexual and sfw ASMR, long enough to make MP3 versions of all the content I'm interested in. I even supported my favorite by buying merch. I mean, it was just a shirt that I do not dare wear in public, but it was an affordable one-time purchase.