https://archive.is/2025.03.06-011758/https://www.ft.com/content/4ab9efe7-36bc-44ff-b2cd-06eb2c38203a
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Gaming chat platform Discord in early talks with banks about public listing
US group has sought to broaden its appeal to a mass audience
Video game developer Jason Citron founded Discord in 2015 © Kimberly White/Getty Images/TechCrunch
Discord is in early talks with banks about a public listing, according to people familiar with the matter, in a sign of a possible revival in the sluggish US IPO market.
Founded in 2015 by video game developer Jason Citron, Discord offers multi-person voice, video and text-based spaces to its 200mn global monthly active users.
The San Francisco gaming chat platform was considering listing as early as 2021, according to people familiar with the matter. However, many technology companies and investors have put their IPO plans on hold due to political and market uncertainty.
That is expected to change this year as interest rates have fallen and US President Donald Trump has laid out a more tech-friendly regulatory agenda.
Discord was last valued at about $15bn in a 2021 fundraising, according to PitchBook. The company’s revived IPO plans remain subject to change, one of the people said.
“We understand there is a lot of interest around Discord’s future plans, but we do not comment on rumours or speculation,” the company said in a statement shared with the Financial Times. “Our focus remains on delivering the best possible experience for our users and building a strong, sustainable business.”
CoreWeave, an artificial intelligence cloud computing provider, filed for a New York IPO this month that would raise about $4bn and value the group at more than $35bn, which could make it the largest tech flotation of the year.
A series of valuable start-ups, including fintech groups Stripe and Chime and data platform Databricks that had been forced to stay private far longer than planned are expected to reignite plans to list their shares.
Discord initially found popularity among gamers, as well as retail trading and cryptocurrency communities, but has since sought to broaden its appeal to a mass audience.
The company has largely shunned advertising, in contrast to larger rivals such as Meta, X and Reddit, in favour of offering its users premium features for a fee.
In 2021, it attracted interest from multiple Big Tech groups, rebuffing a $12bn takeover bid from Microsoft. The recent IPO plans were first reported by The New York Times.
Id say enshitification coming but discords kinda already shit so.
There goes the neighborhood.
And all of your data that they’ve collected over the years.
Lots of very general light chat and shit posts. It doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of revenue potential there.
For a training set. Natural, and familiar conversations.
I don’t see that being worth much $$ given the massive quantities of that information already available on the web via forums and what not?
No, it’s definitely still valuable. It’s one of the biggest repositories of human-to-human communication on the web. I’m sure it will be even more valuable moving forward because you don’t want to train LLM models on LLM-generated stuff, and there isn’t as much incentive on a platform like Discord for bots to masquerade as users… unlike on a persistent public and searchable forum like Reddit, where there are obvious incentives to fabricate posts and comments to sell stuff/astroturf/spin public opinion. Bots exist, of course, but they’re identifiable and can be excluded.
That’s fair.
It’s one of the biggest repositories of human-to-human communication on the web.
I am showing my age and have spent decades on various web forums. These sites have thousands, or even tens of thousands, of users and huge quantities of threads some of which can be very deep. Yes, each individual site isn’t that big but there are tons of these things scattered around the web and I’m sure they’ve been crawled. One of the many, many, many manymanymany Ford Mustang forums has > 2 million replies. thirdgen.org, an 80s-early 90s Camaro/Firebird, forum has 763,427 threads with 6.45 million replies going back easily 20 years, which is well before bots.
Discord does have 154M monthly users, so you’re probably right that there is more content there than across all the various boards. It’s also probably a heck of a lot easier to crawl than a bunch of different web forums.
Yeah, they claim that as of 2022 they had trillions of messages in their database, and this website claims four billion messages are sent per day as of 2022, apparently according to Discord, although I wasn’t able to verify that source.
Different styles of conversation.
Ok time for Matrix & XMPP (or even IRC😉)
looks like me and the boys are going back to teamspeak
Gotta go for the ventrillo rofflecopter going soi soi.
Catch me firing up Mumble again
Absolutely choosing Mumble over TeamSpeak.
I find it funny that people are picking another proprietary piece of crap that, by the way, also requires a license to host servers with more than 32 users.
I’m going back to Yahoo Messenger voice chat.
I find it funny that people are picking another proprietary piece of crap that, by the way, also requires a license to host servers with more than 32 users.
teamspeak and skype was the beginning until discord came in my country. Way better for voice over chatting.
You should have used Axon, way better than Discord
Skype was terrible and the reason that Discord took off.
My group of people is looking at moving to revolt if it happens
Every time something goes public it turns into shit. Every single time.
Well, ever since stock buybacks were re-legalized and other safe guards that once incentivized the health of the company, not only quarterly share holder value. Publicly traded company wasn’t always synonymous with strip mining value. Reagan was an accelerant on that decay for sure.
Stock buybacks are just more tax-efficient dividends. Both return value to the shareholders, but buybacks only realize the gains for the shareholders that want to sell some stock.
If they were illegal companies would issue more dividends
In the past this wasn’t true, but it’s definitely true for new tech products.
There are 2 reasons for that, IMO.
- Tech investors expect year after year, decade after decade of serious growth
- Tech these days is not something you buy, it’s rarely even something you rent, it’s often free and paid for by shoving ads at you
That means that they can’t just land on a good product and stick with it. They have to keep changing it to try to get more engagement, more use, more growth.
But what is shit cannot turn into shit
I guess I’ll go back to matrix? I wish it was a little more polished
Does matrix have decent voice chat?
Its OK when I’ve used it but I generally stick to text
I have a private discord that me and my friends use to hang out and game. I guess I need to test how it fits our need.
For a private voice group, could you use something like mumble? It’s still out there, doing voice well.
Mumble, wire, etc
it has voice and video… though to be honest I’ve never used it.
It might be time to finally get friends to move around if things go south.
I only use discord for stuff that doesn’t provide an alternative. It’s terrible for finding info and questions that have already been asked. Hopefully this will bring back actual forums, discord is not the place for support.
I hate discord so much
My people. I hate it as well.
So the userbase is worth $12bn.
I’ve been frustrated with Discord already after their stint with NFTs 3 years ago, and now there are ads in the channel panel and the cost of Nitro has doubled. But, none of the FOSS alternatives work well enough to move my friends over there, in my experience. Hopefully this will spark some progress, especially if Discord goes the way of Tumblr/Reddit.
Matrix really needs to add channels.
I’m not sure why they don’t just copy the features that should be standard from Discord.
But, none of the FOSS alternatives work well enough to move my friends over there, in my experience.
Been slowly moving to Matrix/Element and was able to convince two buddies to at least make accounts, currently the biggest struggle we’ve had was with the voice channels.
There appears to be two types of voice channels; Jitsi & Element Call, Jitsi works okay but screen sharing appears to not work on either Windows or Linux and also doesn’t appear to allow mobile users to connect with desktop users and vice versa. Meanwhile Element Call seems to work perfectly but there is an unnecessary extra step to install the Element X beta app for mobile for it to work.
Another gripe about Matrix is spaces/room permissions, to my understanding Spaces are like discord servers so when I make a user an Admin you expect them to get admin privilege over every room right? Welp, it’s not and you have to give them admin for every single room also, once you give someone Admin you can’t remove it and they have to do it themselves. While I understand why it’s done this way I find it quite dumb.
The fact that Matrix is apart of the fediverse is enough for me to disregard the issues I mentioned above however, for others it can be seen as a deal-breaker.
Looks like everyone needs to switch to [email protected]
Well, time to look for a new platform.
Did you know there’s a better open source product that fills this hole? It’s called matrix / synapse, only problem is the clients sucked at least two years ago
Matrix is the replacement, but it’s still missing features like channels.
Check out Revolt. They’re trying to mimic Discord.
Jesus fucking Christ, can I not just enjoy one thing in my life without it eventually turning adversarial?
Look for the companies that lead by example. Valve comes to mind. But there’s small businesses out there that do as well.
No, not until you embrace open source software. It was always going to be enshittified. Just a matter of time
I’ve already switched to Linux. The problem I have with this is that all my friends, a Discord server of around 20 people, are not going to be willing to switch. It’s been the way we have stayed in contact for the past 5 years.
“No. Fuck you. Pay me. Now pay me more. Now enjoy ads. Pay me again. We’re now introducing fees associated with the privilege of paying me. So pay that while paying me.”
– approximately everything
One of the reason people here are so insistent about free and open source software is so that you can enjoy things indefinitely.
But the problem I keep running into is getting my friends to switch. They’re not very tech literate as they came from console gaming. I could try to educate them but the response I usually get is “why would I switch to something that might not work when this already works perfectly fine?” And I can’t really argue with it. It’s just not even an issue for them.
Dude i am so glad. Discord was always a cancer, i hope this will spell the beginning of the end of discord. Its the number one biggest offender in terms of limiting access to information on the internet right now. It needs to die.
The number of times I’ve been directed to a useless discord chat while looking for help on a topic is infuriating. Can’t wait for this shit to stop.
It also has plenty of utility for non-information-storing purposes. It’s more of a cultural issue than an issue with the tool.
Besides, wouldn’t it take all the information there to its grave as well, making its death a net information loss? After all, information confined it is still information stored somewhere, just not as easily accessible directly from the Web.
It would probably take a lot of information to its grave, but the more known “servers” would probably get crawled by archive teams.
Also - assuming Discord wouldn’t be replaced by something equally closed off from easy public access - all new information would be easier to access.
When Discord started, they marketed it primarily as a voice chat software for gaming. I remember them marketing it as “superior audio quality to TeamSpeak” or similar wording (which by the way wasn’t the case). It obviously has chat, video chat and screen sharing conveniently built in which TeamSpeak is only starting to add now in 2025 with the TS6 beta (they seem kind of lost atm).
I always preferred the decentralized nature of TeamSpeak and Mumble though and at least from my own experience, TS tends to work better with fewer connection issues and better autogain and voice leveling.
I don’t like the fact that most people happily gave up decentralized voice chat for a centralized alternative and we still use TeamSpeak in most of my circles to this day.
assuming Discord wouldn’t be replaced by something equally closed off from easy public access
That’s what I mean by issue of culture. I don’t think the habit of gathering on discord-like services to quickly exchange info will change, and if the explosion of bsky is anything to go by, people will just find the next shiny, pretty and well-funded platform that totally definitely won’t enshittify somewhere down the line to pay back their venture capital investors.
We’d be cutting the weed without pulling the root.
Information that cant be indexed by a search engine is completely worthless to anyone looking for answers. It might aswell not be there.
Maybe the search engines should start crawling and indexing discord
😐
Discord blocks all attempts at crawling their “public” servers
It’s still information. I agree that it should be available publically, but information available to few is still more than information available to none. I agree that you shouldn’t have to join a Discord server to get that information, but eliminating it entirely so that not even those who do join can access it doesn’t help anybody. It would only hurt a few, but a few is still more than zero.
It’s an issue of culture, so simply eliminating one repository doesn’t fix anything. They’d find some other messaging service to congregate on.
That’s not to say Discord are saints and there is nothing wrong with either their business or their platform. That is a separate issue I think we all agree on.
My point is strictly about the hypothetical deletion of Discord over the drift towards opaque information silos: It won’t help.
information available to few is still more than information available to none
If discord didnt exist, that information would just be elsewhere like proper forums, it doesnt disappear magically.
Well, you have one part right: it won’t disappear magically. If it does, it will do so quite naturally, unless someone actively preserves it, e.g. by archiving the chat histories.
Of course, you might mean the people with the knowledge that wrote those histories in the first place. You know, the people that used Discord instead of forums. The people that left forums. The people that apparently didn’t want to use forums.
Why would you assume they’d move to forums? Clearly there was some reason they chose to use Discord, so why wouldn’t they just find a replacement?
Discord isn’t the issue. I mean, Discord has plenty of issues, but this particular one is a cultural one. Unless we find a way to entice people back to forums (or some other publically indexable platform), they’ll just keep going elsewhere.
So maybe instead of condemning Discord we should ask “Why do people prefer it?” Then we can figure out how to address that and actually do something about the root of the issue.
Good, that will teach people to use such a shit platform to store “important” information. I hope tons of apps and programs and games crash and burn with it so the lesson sticks.
They probably don’t intentionally use it to store information so much as quickly and conveniently exchange answers and questions. Forums have evidently proven inadequate for that purpose, so unless people find a better solution and make it stick, the lesson sure won’t.
Oh but there’s a shit ton of documentation that’s only available on discord and that’s not searchable anywhere and that will just be wiped out of discord ever dies.
Forums are the best for knowledge accumulation via user interactions, Reddit like platforms are second and then you’ve got whatever discord is and regular chat rooms…
Oh but there’s a shit ton of documentation that’s only available on discord and that’s not searchable anywhere and that will just be wiped out of discord ever dies.
I absolutely agree. That’s part of the point I’m trying to make: The death of Discord might well cause those things to be lost. Hoping for it to crash and burn is counterproductive because thay will only do damage.
Instead, we should figure out why people moved to Discord in the first place, because…
Forums are the best for knowledge accumulation via user interactions
…clearly, whatever makes forums “the best” isn’t enough. Then what is it that Discord does better? How can forums work to match it and entice people back?
I don’t know. I’m not one of the people that preferred Discord and I can’t speak for them. But maybe we should listen first instead of wishing ill on them and hoping their favourite places die.
People want instantaneous replies instead of having to wait like on forums. Steam still has forums and they’re active so clearly not everyone left, Reddit isn’t as good because of the lack of permanence (no bumping).
I’m this case I’m very sorry but people just went for the instantaneous reward of chatting and disregarded what they were losing.
I have bad news for you, it was adversarial from the beginning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvNkdAggUGU
I don’t know why people trusted Discord, it’s one of the worst platforms and I say this while I use it because I had to settle for that (friends) like I had to settle for WhatsApp (family and work)
Irc was better for chat, ventilo and mumble better for audio, and matrix is pretty much the same but better. Discord sucks like Twitter did and I can’t wait for it to go away. And forums are a better platform for help and documentation.
Thank God I convinced my fiancee to move our VCs to Wire, away from WhatsApp and Discord.
I think it’s less about trusting Discord and more about not giving a shit. It does the thing they want it to do and that’s the extent of their consideration. It’s the reason why everyone still uses Windows even though it’s basically spyware at this point. Talking to my friends about it is like talking to a brick wall and they just check out of the conversation.
Discord does exactly one thing not entirely shittily. It puts all those features in one place. It gets beat out in any one feature, but you can run an entire community within a Discord for free. You shouldn’t because it’s terrible at most of that and mediocre at the rest, but it’s free and just good enough if you bludgeon it into shape with tools and bots and stuff.
you can run an entire community within a Discord for free
Wonder how long this will last. Bet they are burning angel investors money up to now, going public is the first step towards having to become profitable.
It’s free because you’re the product
The best part about discord is the streaming feature. So far I haven’t been able to find a replacement for that.
You enjoy discord???
I used to. It’s entirely too easy of a program to use.
Man, it’s one of the worst UI I ever had the displeasure to use…
I came from skype so my bar was already pretty low. I’m not defending Discord, by the way. I’ve just been using it to talk to my friends for years because they all had Discord and it was convenient.
Time to introduce my friends to the glory of TeamSpeak!
mumble works very well and is foss as well.
Ah, haven’t used that in a long while. I’ll add that to the list to peddle to my mates as well. Thank you!
You can even trivially run your own server on an old Raspberry Pi.
I used to run one on a Pi 2 that would regularly have ~100 concurrent users without any hiccups
It shut down, didnt it?
It’s been a number of years since I used it while playing Eve Online, but say it isn’t so! I’m going to check now!
Edit: Still exists!
I know they had a terrible redesign last year and then it went all terribly down hill
Not very promising. What a shame.
They had another redesign this year too as well, to try to make it more “discord-y” that’s currently in beta I believe.
Though I do think they’re a little too late…
They’ve been working on the redesign for awhile now, but the version everyone’s used to (Teamspeak 3) still works perfectly fine. TS3 clients can connect to new Teamspeak servers, and new Teamspeak clients can connect to old teamspeak servers, just without the new features like screen share
My group still uses TS3 on a daily basis on a self hosted server
