I think the idea of raising the price of a Discord Nitro subscription from $5 to $10 to pay for the privilege of buying games that would otherwise have been released in a non-exclusive state not...
I think the idea of raising the price of a Discord Nitro subscription from $5 to $10 to pay for the privilege of buying games that would otherwise have been released in a non-exclusive state not only ultimately harms people but also represents a new and perversely negative direction of any related future software development in this space. Exclusivity is a concept that needs to fade to history, not be re-imagined so a platform can say "we have something" while harming the larger group of people who ultimately now have reduced choice.
What irritates me about Discord is much less about the software but rather the company. This is a program (ahem, platform) that didn't exist one day and then had 100M users with millions of dollars of marketing behind it the next - all in an era where it has been popularized to pump a bunch of VC into a tech startup and then sell the company to a larger one when your platform has $X million users.
Another thing that bothers me is the lack of End to End Encryption (E2E). I feel this is incredibly irresponsible particularly when representatives of the company - including CEO Jason Citron - state that they use TLS for "text chat etc" which is about data in transit and is not what E2E is concerned with. They stated back in 2016 on their feedback page that they have no plans on implementing any kind of E2E implementation which I find troublesome particularly since the Signal protocol that is brought up in this link has already been implemented to other popular communications software like WhatsApp.
I simply don't buy that the difficulty in putting this feature in your software is insurmountable for a company like Discord. They said they'd revisit it and almost three years later, it remains one of the most important suggestions voted into the thousands on the "declined suggestions" page (the votes of which, by the way, were locked. So now you can't even vote for this feature even if you sign-in).
At a more superficial level, I'd be thrilled with a more minimalistic interface - something MSN Messenger managed to do a decade ago. Discord shouldn't take up so much screen real estate. I'd also be thrilled with an option to separate "identities" on a per server basis.
Your data is valuable and they know it. This is not a trustworthy company.
Yeah, the main issue is (as always) the dependence on venture capital. I link this article quite a bit, but I really like how Aral Balkan put it in his "Ello, goodbye" post: Discord has taken a...
Yeah, the main issue is (as always) the dependence on venture capital. I link this article quite a bit, but I really like how Aral Balkan put it in his "Ello, goodbye" post:
Let me put it bluntly: if a company has taken venture capital, you have already been sold. It’s not a matter of if, it’s simply a matter of when. (Unless the company goes under before it can exit, that is.) A venture-capital funded startup is a temporary company that has to convince enough people into using their platform so that they can make good on the exit they promised their investors at the very beginning. It is the opposite of a long-term, sustainable business.
Discord has taken a lot of VC very quickly (about $130M total now) and are now starting to flail around and look like they have some sort of plan for making money. I don't think either Nitro or the game store is going to work, because there are way too many other options people are already invested in, and Discord's store doesn't really seem to have anything particularly compelling about it. But they'll probably try to push it harder and harder for the next little while anyway.
As you said, most of their value is probably related to all the data they have about connections between people and the games they play, private and semi-private conversations, etc. It'll most likely end up pretty ugly when they eventually start trying to turn that into money through advertising or other methods.
I was one of the early adopters of Discord specifically because of it's flashy interface (and the free servers, because I was a teenager and didn't want to spend money on a teamspeak server), but...
At a more superficial level, I'd be thrilled with a more minimalistic interface - something MSN Messenger managed to do a decade ago. Discord shouldn't take up so much screen real estate. I'd also be thrilled with an option to separate "identities" on a per server basis.
I was one of the early adopters of Discord specifically because of it's flashy interface (and the free servers, because I was a teenager and didn't want to spend money on a teamspeak server), but using it now, I have started to really dislike it's interface. Discord, for the service it provides, is incredibly bloated. I don't know why, but it feels sluggish to start the whole thing and use it. I'm yearning for the simplicity of Teamspeak but I feel like that software is on it's way out now.
Also you can verify only one account per phone number. Now I have to pay for a second phone number or use the same account for work, personal, dev work, etc..
Also you can verify only one account per phone number. Now I have to pay for a second phone number or use the same account for work, personal, dev work, etc..
The blog post gives a summary of some of the other updates that Discord's announced related to adding a game store lately, but one thing in particular that's probably worth checking out is the...
The blog post gives a summary of some of the other updates that Discord's announced related to adding a game store lately, but one thing in particular that's probably worth checking out is the list of the first set of "First on Discord" games, which will be exclusive to the Discord store for 90 days or so when they release.
Fucking exclusives. 90 days is reasonable, I suppose... and I don't really hold it against the game developers for taking the deal either since that extra injection of cash can often mean the...
Fucking exclusives. 90 days is reasonable, I suppose... and I don't really hold it against the game developers for taking the deal either since that extra injection of cash can often mean the difference between releasing a game or running out of funds before finishing it. However I can't help but feel morally opposed to the very idea of platform exclusives, especially on PC where they traditionally have not been present, unlike consoles. And that goes for Origin, Steam, GOG, etc exclusives, too... not just Discord (who I distrust and despise immensely as a company despite being forced to use them in many cases).
Yep I already have steam, origin, battle.net and to a lesser extend twitch (because I keep getting free games from my amazon prime subscription). I don't need another game platform, I need three...
Yep I already have steam, origin, battle.net and to a lesser extend twitch (because I keep getting free games from my amazon prime subscription). I don't need another game platform, I need three fewer. I want it to be the platform that brings me the best deals and user experience, not the one that has the game I want to play and no one else does.
Call me crazy, but I find it hard to trust any Corporation that has no sustainable business model, is hundreds of millions in debt to Venture Capitalists already and is relying entirely on...
Exemplary
Call me crazy, but I find it hard to trust any Corporation that has no sustainable business model, is hundreds of millions in debt to Venture Capitalists already and is relying entirely on inflated valuations based solely on "growth" and "user numbers" (but no profitability) to continue to get them even more VC money so they can stay in business. At some point the Pied Pipers of Venture Capitalism are going to demand their due and when the VC indebted company can't pay (which they can only do by either being acquired or successfully launching an IPO), then the users are the ones who ultimately will be the ones to pay, whether they realize they are paying or not. IMO this is exactly what is happening to reddit right now and it will happen to Discord eventually too.
However the biggest problem I see with these "disruptive technology" type companies is that they are absolutely destroying the competitive ecosystem around them by utilizing predatory pricing which they are only able to sustain by continually taking on huge amounts of additional debt. This is entirely unsustainable and incredibly unhealthy for the markets in which they are dominating since all their competitors, who actually did have sustainable business models up until the point they started getting undercut by these companies, are going out of business left and right... and eventually the only companies left will be the ones using that unsustainable model. This is a recipe for absolute economic disaster, IMO.
I think the idea of raising the price of a Discord Nitro subscription from $5 to $10 to pay for the privilege of buying games that would otherwise have been released in a non-exclusive state not only ultimately harms people but also represents a new and perversely negative direction of any related future software development in this space. Exclusivity is a concept that needs to fade to history, not be re-imagined so a platform can say "we have something" while harming the larger group of people who ultimately now have reduced choice.
What irritates me about Discord is much less about the software but rather the company. This is a program (ahem, platform) that didn't exist one day and then had 100M users with millions of dollars of marketing behind it the next - all in an era where it has been popularized to pump a bunch of VC into a tech startup and then sell the company to a larger one when your platform has $X million users.
Another thing that bothers me is the lack of End to End Encryption (E2E). I feel this is incredibly irresponsible particularly when representatives of the company - including CEO Jason Citron - state that they use TLS for "text chat etc" which is about data in transit and is not what E2E is concerned with. They stated back in 2016 on their feedback page that they have no plans on implementing any kind of E2E implementation which I find troublesome particularly since the Signal protocol that is brought up in this link has already been implemented to other popular communications software like WhatsApp.
I simply don't buy that the difficulty in putting this feature in your software is insurmountable for a company like Discord. They said they'd revisit it and almost three years later, it remains one of the most important suggestions voted into the thousands on the "declined suggestions" page (the votes of which, by the way, were locked. So now you can't even vote for this feature even if you sign-in).
At a more superficial level, I'd be thrilled with a more minimalistic interface - something MSN Messenger managed to do a decade ago. Discord shouldn't take up so much screen real estate. I'd also be thrilled with an option to separate "identities" on a per server basis.
Your data is valuable and they know it. This is not a trustworthy company.
Yeah, the main issue is (as always) the dependence on venture capital. I link this article quite a bit, but I really like how Aral Balkan put it in his "Ello, goodbye" post:
Discord has taken a lot of VC very quickly (about $130M total now) and are now starting to flail around and look like they have some sort of plan for making money. I don't think either Nitro or the game store is going to work, because there are way too many other options people are already invested in, and Discord's store doesn't really seem to have anything particularly compelling about it. But they'll probably try to push it harder and harder for the next little while anyway.
As you said, most of their value is probably related to all the data they have about connections between people and the games they play, private and semi-private conversations, etc. It'll most likely end up pretty ugly when they eventually start trying to turn that into money through advertising or other methods.
I was one of the early adopters of Discord specifically because of it's flashy interface (and the free servers, because I was a teenager and didn't want to spend money on a teamspeak server), but using it now, I have started to really dislike it's interface. Discord, for the service it provides, is incredibly bloated. I don't know why, but it feels sluggish to start the whole thing and use it. I'm yearning for the simplicity of Teamspeak but I feel like that software is on it's way out now.
Also you can verify only one account per phone number. Now I have to pay for a second phone number or use the same account for work, personal, dev work, etc..
The blog post gives a summary of some of the other updates that Discord's announced related to adding a game store lately, but one thing in particular that's probably worth checking out is the list of the first set of "First on Discord" games, which will be exclusive to the Discord store for 90 days or so when they release.
Fucking exclusives. 90 days is reasonable, I suppose... and I don't really hold it against the game developers for taking the deal either since that extra injection of cash can often mean the difference between releasing a game or running out of funds before finishing it. However I can't help but feel morally opposed to the very idea of platform exclusives, especially on PC where they traditionally have not been present, unlike consoles. And that goes for Origin, Steam, GOG, etc exclusives, too... not just Discord (who I distrust and despise immensely as a company despite being forced to use them in many cases).
I fucking hate vidya game exclusivity. It does nothing but fuck over the consumer.
Yep I already have steam, origin, battle.net and to a lesser extend twitch (because I keep getting free games from my amazon prime subscription). I don't need another game platform, I need three fewer. I want it to be the platform that brings me the best deals and user experience, not the one that has the game I want to play and no one else does.
If I may ask, why do you distrust Discord specifically? I tend to suggest them all the time, and I wonder if I just haven't seen the bad sides.
Call me crazy, but I find it hard to trust any Corporation that has no sustainable business model, is hundreds of millions in debt to Venture Capitalists already and is relying entirely on inflated valuations based solely on "growth" and "user numbers" (but no profitability) to continue to get them even more VC money so they can stay in business. At some point the Pied Pipers of Venture Capitalism are going to demand their due and when the VC indebted company can't pay (which they can only do by either being acquired or successfully launching an IPO), then the users are the ones who ultimately will be the ones to pay, whether they realize they are paying or not. IMO this is exactly what is happening to reddit right now and it will happen to Discord eventually too.
However the biggest problem I see with these "disruptive technology" type companies is that they are absolutely destroying the competitive ecosystem around them by utilizing predatory pricing which they are only able to sustain by continually taking on huge amounts of additional debt. This is entirely unsustainable and incredibly unhealthy for the markets in which they are dominating since all their competitors, who actually did have sustainable business models up until the point they started getting undercut by these companies, are going out of business left and right... and eventually the only companies left will be the ones using that unsustainable model. This is a recipe for absolute economic disaster, IMO.