Discord (software)

Discord is a proprietary freeware VoIP application designed for gaming communities. Discord runs on Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Linux, and in a web browser. As of December 2017, there were about 87 million unique users of the software.

History
The concept of Discord came from CEO Jason Citron, who had founded OpenFeint, a social gaming platform for mobile games. He eventually sold OpenFeint to GREE in 2011 for $104 million,[4] which he used to found Hammer & Chisel, a game development studio, in 2012.[5] Their original product was Fates Forever released in 2014, which Citron anticipated to be the first MOBA game on mobile platforms. While Fates Forever was not commercially successful due to low popularity, Citron noted the difficulties that his team had in building the game when trying to play other representative games like Final Fantasy XIV and League of Legends to work out gameplay concepts, specifically highlighting issues of current Voice over IP options that were available: some VoIP options required players to share various IP addresses just to connect, while other services like Skype or TeamSpeak were resource-heavy and had known security issues. This led the developers towards developing a chat service that was much friendlier to use based on more modern technology.[6]

To develop Discord, Hammer & Chisel gained additional funding from YouWeb's 9+ incubator, who had also funded the startup of Hammer & Chisel, and from Benchmark capital and Tencent.[7][8]

The public release of Discord was in May 2015.[9] According to Citron, the only area that they pushed Discord into was for the Reddit communities, finding that many subreddit forums were replacing IRC servers with Discord ones.[10] Discord became popular through eSports and LAN tournament gamers and through other Twitch.tvstreamers.[11]

The company raised an additional $20 million in funding for the software in January 2016.

Software
The Discord client is built on the Electron framework using web technologies,[13] which allows it to be multi-platform and run on personal computers and the web. The software is supported by eleven data centers scattered around the world to keep latency with clients low.[14] All versions of the client support the same feature set. The Discord application for personal computers is specifically designed for use while gaming, as it includes features such as low-latency, free voice chat servers for users and a dedicated server infrastructure. Discord's developers also added video calling and screen sharing in 2017.[9] Direct calling was added in an update on July 28, 2016, with support for calls between two or more users. In December 2016, the company introduced its GameBridge API, which allows game developers to directly support integration with Discord within games.[15] The Git repository documentation for the Discord API is hosted on GitHub.

Discord provides partial support for rich text via the Markdown syntax.[16]

While the software itself comes at no cost, the developers investigated ways to monetize it, with potential options including paid customization options such as emoji or stickers.[7] In January 2017, the first paid features were released with 'Discord Nitro'. For a monthly subscription fee users can get an animated avatar, use custom and/or animated[17] emojis across all servers, an increased maximum file size on file uploads (from 8 MBto 50 MB), and a unique profile badge.[18] The developers have claimed that while they will look for ways to monetize the software, it will never lose its core features.[19] Discord uses the Opus audio format, which is low-latency and designed to compress speech.[19]

Video calling and screensharing functionality was added to Discord, first over a small test base in August 2017 and with full rollout in October 2017.[20] While these features mimic live streaming capabilities of platforms like Twitch.tv, the company does not plan to compete with these services, believing that these features are best tuned to serve small groups.[21]

In October 2017, Discord offered "verified servers", with about 450 of these by the end of 2017. These servers are offered to game developers and publishers to directly manage and moderate the server, after confirming identity and details with the Discord team. Developers and publishers with verified servers can use data from Discord to create a "rich presence" within their games, such as connecting player profiles to their Discord profile; about 20 such verified servers were using these features by the end of 2017.

Reception
By January 2016, Hammer & Chisel claimed that Discord had been used by 3 million people, with growth of 1 million per month, reaching 11 million users in July that year.[12][23] As of December 2016, the company reports it had 25 million users worldwide.[15] By the end of 2017, the service had drawn nearly 90 million users, with roughly 1.5 million new users each week.[24] The company observed that while the bulk of their 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.[21]

In May 2016, one year after the software's release, Tom Marks, writing for PC Gamer, described Discord as the best VoIP service available.[9] Lifehacker has praised Discord's interface, ease of use and platform compatibility.[25]

Disruptive Use
Discord has had problems with hostile behaviour and abuse within chats, with some communities of chat servers being "raided" by other communities. This includes flooding with controversial topics related to race, religion, politics, and pornography.[26] Discord has stated that they have plans to implement changes that would "rid the platform of the issue".[27]

Discord gained popularity with the alt-right due to the client's features supporting anonymity and privacy. Analyst Keegan Hankes from the Southern Poverty Law Center said "It's pretty unavoidable to be a leader in this [alt-right] movement without participating in Discord".[28][29] In early 2017, CEO Jason Citron stated Discord was aware of these groups and their servers.[30] 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.[31]

Following the violent events that occurred during the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12, 2017, it was found that Discord had been used to plan and organize the white nationalist rally. This included participation by Richard Spencer and Andrew Anglin, high-level figures in the movement.[28] Discord responded by closing servers that supported the alt-right and far-right, and banning users who had participated.[32] Discord's executives condemned "white supremacy" and "neo-Nazism", and said that these groups "are not welcome on Discord".[28]

To better protect its users and its services since these events, Discord has implemented a trust and safety team that is on call around the clock to monitor the servers and respond to reports. This includes dealing with user harassment, servers that violate Discord's terms of service, and to protect servers from "raiding" (taking over a server with a large number of users) and spamming by malicious users or bots. While they do not directly monitor messages, the trust and safety team can determine malicious activity from service use patterns and take appropriate steps, including more detailed investigation, to deal with the matter. The service plans to expand this team as they continue to gain new users.[24][21]

In January 2018, The Daily Beast reported that it found that there were several Discord servers that were specifically engaged in distributing revenge porn and facilitating real-world harassment of the victims of these images and videos. Such actions are against Discord's terms of service and Discord has shut down servers and banned users identified from these servers, but the ease of creating new accounts and servers allows such servers to continue to proliferate.