- cross-posted to:
- jeuxvideo@jlai.lu
- cross-posted to:
- jeuxvideo@jlai.lu
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.
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Id say enshitification coming but discords kinda already shit so.
Discord sucks but this might be easy money if you join at the very start.
I don’t personally understand why people want to use it, but if you’re one of those people, https://revolt.chat/ might be a great alternative. They’re open source (at least for now).
Well, I remember TeamSpeak being really good and easy to use.
Also proprietary and requires a “Gamer License” to host servers for more than 32 users.
Mumble is, and has always been, the king of voice chat apps and is completely FOSS. Also it works a lot better.
I’m calling it. Backup all your data and move it elsewhere, you may have to pay to access or have it deleted.
Reminder: Matrix is open source and federated
Matrix needs more time in the oven before it’s ready for widespread adoption.
I really did try to make it work (for months) but it’s a buggy and unpolished experience, everyone that tried it with me ended up going back to Discord and Signal for communication.
Unsure if this is satire about the Matrix or an actual platform that thought it was smart to call itself Matrix
I did find out and do sorta use it now! Still don’t agree with the name though
It’s an actual platform. It’s basically FOSS discord.
Ohh found it, bad naming in terms of SEO. Does it have screen sharing or is it just a chat/call/videocall app? Personally me and my friends use discord for 2 reasons: Chatting and screensharing. We use teamspeak to talk during gaming
Glad I already nuked mine.
Sadly they do keep all of your messages just anonymised
Thanks for the heads up at least
Enshittifcation imminent
It’s already pretty shitty to be fair
Can it be any more enshitified tho?
Discord is completely fine. It doesn’t break. Practically no bugs. The only annoying thing is that sometimes the shop gets a red badge but that’s it
I completely disagree with this and have been for years.
It has often had connectivity issues, big lags, higher latencies and lower bitrates than Mumble or even TeamSpeak.
It’s super bloated, they churn out useless “features” so fast that it keeps making it use more resources and makes everything slower.
Until recently, being in voice call with more than 3-4 people made all my 16 cores attempt self destruction.
It is a freemium piece of bloatware.
Disagree, it was fine when all it did was gaming parties but everything else from shitty UX, to rampant bots, to barely working functionalities. It’s so bloated it cant keep up. Also it’s proprietary, unencrypted and frankly just overall bad piece of software for anything but gaming.
I play daily with friends and I have maybe one disruption per year with voice not working, zero lags, constant 5ms latency, and since 2018 I had completely ZERO bots pm me. Recently someone messaged me out of nowhere about playing Phasmophobia together, with a girly avatar, and I thought it must be some bot, but it turned out to be an actual person 😅
It’s interesting for me how different experiences we have
I totally agree, except also for gaming.
Compared to alternatives, there are often lags and complete disruptions, latency is horrible, bitrate is a paid feature, and for large groups of voice channels (like managing a 500 player operation in Eve), features are still lacking.
Also security is a joke. In Mumble, you can manage (certificate based!) permissions on every level imaginable.
They spend their time on making silly themes and Nitro features nobody cares about.
This just hasn’t been my experience at all and with respect to bots it sounds like server run issues not a problem with discord itself.
Discord: Hold my beer
It was nice while it lasted.
Back to Ventrillo or TeamSpeak I guess…
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?
Different styles of conversation.
Well it was fun while it lasted
I hate that everyone uses discord. Why can’t we use IRC which is obviously better and uses a tiny fraction of the system resources that discord uses?
“Obviously better” this isn’t obvious to me at all. Just because you don’t use the many features it offers doesn’t mean other people don’t.
My 4GBs agree. I literally cannot use discord. It takes ridiculous amounts of resource because you are meant to goddamn live in it, not just chat.
Discord was great when it had a goal to be a connection point for gaming parties but then they got greedy.
Reaction emojis, threads, screen sharing, and voice chat. IRC has none of these features. Better to get on the Matrix train
Ircv3 has reactions, and threads. Along with some other features, like persistent condos.
Voice and screen sharing can be implemented via external services.
Matrix is so bad though. Slow, sometimes just doesn’t load, bridges are crap… Why would I want to switch to it?
Do you have an alternative to suggest or are you just here to whine?
Zulip.
Honestly if Discord went away I’d switch to posting notes on a cork board on the wall before I switched to Matrix in its current state.
“But I don’t want to eat the moldy cabbage on the ground outside!”
“Okay, do you have an alternative, or are you just gonna whine? Eat up!”
“We have these delicious carrots.”
“I ONLY WANT CABBAGE THAT’S BEEN SITTING OUT FOR A WEEK!”
I hate how companies will refer to their Discord for customer service… Fuck that shit. Should be illegal.
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.
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!
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
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…
This only exelerates the enshittification that already started
I kinda want discord to get shitter. It might eventually get to a point it pushes more people to using IRC instead.
accelerates
Did they fucking stutter? Exelerates.
The enshittification has finally struck the English language
I blame dyslexia in combination with english not being my first language
This is not enshittification, this is evolution. “Exelerates” is superior to “accelerates”.
I was trying to make a joke
Coldside was just emplifying your joke
What? Its evolving!
Accelerate turned into exelerate!
Oh no
