Despite the title, which implies this author dislikes Discord, quite the contrary.
The sometimes awesome, mostly good gamer communication utility, ah yes, there is a lot to like about Discord, but some of the new features being added are inarguably head scratchers.
Unless you’re from perspective of wanting as many users as possible to buy Nitro, the $10/month Discord subscription. This is how the service makes money and, in case nobody remembered, things that are cool that are free more often than not get ruined by excessive monetization schemes.
Hopefully, Discord does not fall into that virtual Sarlacc pit.
Alas, you might be wondering what inspired this screed? A more eloquent, well-written article by Mollie Taylor (@mollietayy) / X), lays to waste specific things wrong with Discord, but Ms. Taylor can’t resist the sobering reality that was the last year of Discord feature creep:
On the flip side some updates have been… not so good. Most of them seem to have taken place over the course of the last 12 months, and I have to admit, I’m kind of tired of it at this point. For how much Discord has become so heavily intertwined with my daily life, I sincerely wish they would stop messing around with what makes it such a good platform to be on in the first place.
I am begging Discord to stop bombarding me with pointless new features | PC Gamer
If you want to look over all the Discord features, and have questions, the official Discord features Support page is a good place to start.
Did you know you could invite friends to play games through Discord? Yes, you can. See the Discord Game Invites feature. Despite being a regular Discord user for years now, I’ve never once had any friend invite me to a game through Discord, have you?
Spellcheck in Discord? Including the ability to add custom words, check, never used.
Super reactions might be among the dumbest thing seen added to Discord recently and, of course, it’s a monetization play. Who saw that feature and scrambled for their wallet to buy Nitro? Seriously, when we already have reactions, emotes, why do we need super reactions with even more animations?
Guess to really drive home the emotion?
The games they added to Discord? Remember those? Yes, you can play games through Discord from Discord with your friends. This is explained on the Discord Games & Activities page which features the 17, as of this writing, games that can be played. There is also “Watch YouTube” together.
They made some/most/all(?) of these free to play for everyone, when they were locked behind the pay wall previously. That’s a plus, but do we really need Discord-specific games when we come to use Discord as a supplement to playing games already? Then again, maybe we do. I’m in the camp that likes games mixed with stuff that seems non-complimentary, like Netflix and games, so not a complaint, really, just a question.
(Maybe the better question is how many reading have played even one of these Discord games? Make note to check out these activities/games in the future)
Bottom line: chill out, Discord. It seems like the firehose needs to be dialed back somewhat. Don’t add too many features too fast. And don’t over-monetize. We all understand you need $$$ to keep the service running, but becoming obnoxious about it could/will backfire.
Bob