Discord is abandoning subscription games because nobody played them

Shawn Knight

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Staff member
Recap: It’s been nearly a year since Discord expanded its Nitro subscription service, transforming the offering into a game subscription service. In hindsight, it seems as though the move was a rare misstep for a company that can seemingly do no wrong as of late.

Discord revealed in a recent blog post that while some subscribers loved the games included in Nitro, the vast majority of gamers didn’t play them. After careful consideration, the team said it “won’t be hitting continue when these contracts come up for renewal” next month.

As a result, the Nitro Games catalog will be taken offline on October 15, 2019. You'll be able to play them up until that date, however.

Discord is offering a refund to subscribers that wish to cancel their membership over the matter. Simply contact the Discord team to get that ball rolling should you so choose.

There is an upside to removing the catalog in that it frees up additional resources for Discord to refocus. The company said it is going to “double down” on making sure Nitro lives up to its mission of having more features, fun and enhancements. For starters, they’re doubling the upload size to 100MB for Nitro subscribers and reducing the number of boosts needed to reach level 3, from 50 down to just 20.

Server boosts allow users to unlock additional perks including higher-quality audio, vanity URLs and additional emoji slots.

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A noble effort but in an already too crowded market. Talking through the Xbox application or Skype carries a worse call quality than Discord, so I give them that.
 
LOL .... and yet, we have more companies trying to get subscription services of all kinds started .... they will never learn!
 
It was nice to see them try, and their intentions were good (helping out indie games), but yeah... It was a bad idea in the first place. Nobody needed another game subscription service from a company without any chops in this area (with fewer benefits or interesting titles). They also quietly shut down their Store a while ago. Seems that was an even more short-lived concept.

Like Outlaw said, though, gotta give 'em credit for seeing which way the wind was blowing and backing off instead of doubling down. That sort of foresight, or at least basic common sense, is quite rare in the gaming industry these days.
 
Subscription games on a chat service? How could that have failed?!? Foolproof business idea...... {sarcasm}
 
Subscription games on a chat service? How could that have failed?!? Foolproof business idea...... {sarcasm}

It's a chat service based on gaming, it had as good a chance as any other company to succeed in this. The lack of Exclusive AAA titles is what eventually killed this venture.
 
I guess a model like Humble Bundle would work better. A popular one or a big game on display and a couple of indy would help better but with an emphasis on the small indy devs ?!?
 
It's a chat service based on gaming, it had as good a chance as any other company to succeed in this. The lack of Exclusive AAA titles is what eventually killed this venture.
It's still a chat service(and not a great one) that tried to sell a subscription based game platform no one asked for or wanted.
 
It's still a chat service(and not a great one) that tried to sell a subscription based game platform no one asked for or wanted.

Sorry, but I decided to do a quick google search on using Discord over Skype: A website called Slant rates Discord as the #1 as the best voice chat for gaming, where as skype is 13th...(mumble and Teamspeak 3 come in #2 and #3 respectively)

as for discords user base, it has an estimated 19 million users on a daily basis compared to a paltry 1.33 million for Skype... I respectfully disagree with your comment. that Discord is not a great chat service. The figures clearly suggest otherwise.

As for saying that that discord provided a gaming platform that no one asked for or wanted?
 
Sorry, but I decided to do a quick google search on using Discord over Skype: A website called Slant rates Discord as the #1 as the best voice chat for gaming, where as skype is 13th...(mumble and Teamspeak 3 come in #2 and #3 respectively)
Yay...good for them. I've used it and think it sucks from functionality, dependability and security standpoint.

as for discords user base, it has an estimated 19 million users on a daily basis compared to a paltry 1.33 million for Skype... I respectfully disagree with your comment. that Discord is not a great chat service. The figures clearly suggest otherwise.

As for saying that that discord provided a gaming platform that no one asked for or wanted?
That's cool. Respect your opinion. Think it's wrong from a practical perspective, but no worries.
 
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