'Remember: Not every opportunity to generate revenue needs to become a get-rich-quick scheme,' Yang warns. The average experience of finding new communities on Discord just seems like it'll be flat-out worse if your first impression of a server is now defined by greyed-out channels you can't see without paying a $10 admission.ĭiscord doesn't plan to police what server owners charge for stuff, and is instead hoping that they use the new tools wisely. Giving moderators free rein to paywall individual functions of a server also sounds ripe for abuse. I'm mostly sad that what used to be my oasis away from an increasingly paywalled internet is becoming just like it. That's fair-obviously there's nothing wrong with selling what you make (thanks PC Gamer magazine subscribers), and these new payment features are largely just Discord integrating what Patreon already makes possible. Yang says paywalled media channels are a way to 'give your subscribers lavish insider content' in addition to what the server already offers for free. Of course, Discord doesn't see it that way. My worst fears at that time (crackdowns on Go Live streams and the end of radio bots) haven't come to fruition, but now I'm wondering if Server Shops and Tier Templates are the start of something worse. Two years ago I urged us all to enjoy Discord while it's still good. By opening the floodgates to itemized monetization, Discord is inherently making Discord a less welcoming place. It's all kind of excess baggage if you, like me, operate a small server of 15 friends who play games together.ĭiscord remains the easiest and best way to talk to friends online, but today's update makes its current trajectory hard to ignore. In recent years Discord has set its sight almost exclusively on large communities-launching (and then often forgetting) features like forum channels and live stages designed to turn Discord servers into siloed social networks.

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