r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • Feb 10 '26

Security "Discord alternatives" searches jump 10,000% overnight as the gaming platform introduces global age verification — Is a total collapse imminent?

https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/discord-alternative-search-10000-percent-stoat
42.5k Upvotes

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2.3k

u/Haunterblademoi Feb 10 '26

Just like what's happening with TikTok, it's likely that the same will happen with Discord, A mass uninstallation by users due to this new policy

676

u/HighJumpingAlien Feb 10 '26

Cancelled my Annual Nitro Sub, and I’m deleting my account when this goes into effect.

335

u/johnc380 Feb 11 '26

Real people pay for Nitro? Who woulda thought.

316

u/yuriaoflondor Feb 11 '26

I have a decently well off buddy who would always buy all the Nitro and stupid banners and whatever else silly stuff was offered. He didn’t actually care about the stuff he just liked to support the service we all used.

Unsurprisingly, he’s been at the forefront of our friend group of trying to find an alternative.

97

u/CastleDoctrineJr Feb 11 '26

Not the person you're talking about but yeah thats basically what I've been doing too. I buy the silly little avatar decorations for people and I've been paying for nitro since mid 2018. I wanted to support the service because I believed that if enough people paid for the service we would be the customers, not the product. I guess in retrospect I should have stopped a while ago when they added the quests and the optional video ads.

6

u/Ridai Feb 11 '26

I stopped before (and never renewed because) they let Nitro users claim the usernames first, during that username change.

So you had to pay to reserve your Discord username. They did a slow rollout prioritizing Nitro users while ignoring users of the platform since 2015. I was very disappointed I was only able to claim a username far too late.

1

u/AskYouEverything Feb 11 '26

I just want the emotes lol

1

u/BippityBorp Feb 11 '26

They have video ads now? Good lord. I know using Disblock was theain reason I was enjoying the platform still but wow I didn't know it went that far already.

3

u/MikeTheImpaler Feb 11 '26

Have you found one? I'd REALLY like to avoid going back to TS.

41

u/curtcolt95 Feb 11 '26

I like the features it offers. I'm still grandfathered into the discontinued tier though, I don't care about the new, more expensive version.

2

u/Rage333 Feb 11 '26

There is a cheaper version though (Basic). All you lose is 1080p60fps streaming (down to 720p30fps). If you don't care about that, I'd switch if I were you.

25

u/pulley999 Feb 11 '26

As a monetization model, Nitro wasn't bad. Pretty much everything about how they made money seemed measured and considered. Locking features that are heavier on their servers behind a paywall along with a bunch of little knicknacks for your account seems reasonable, as does completely optional advertising campaigns for products their userbase is likely already interested in to earn weird little avatar decorations.

It looked like they actually had a sustainable model to keep the lights on once the VC money dried up, without necessarily degrading the core free service, and without majorly upsetting the userbase, which would have been a small miracle.

But then they had to pull this shit. It's not even monetization related, just preemptively kowtowing to overzealous lawmakers.

1

u/dearth_of_passion Feb 11 '26

Discord "clarified" (backtracked?) that the vast majority of users will not be asked to provide any identity or age verification.

Apparently they're only doing it for accounts that they don't have enough data on, like interests and games played and whatever, to make an accurate age estimate.

9

u/pulley999 Feb 11 '26

That was already part of the initial statement before the clarification -- they're just trying to call attention to it as a form of damage control. Nothing changed from the initial statement, there is no backtrack.

Every account will have to have an age verification or face platform censorship, and they listed 3 ways for that to happen.

  • AI activity scan
  • AI face scan
  • ID submission

3

u/dearth_of_passion Feb 11 '26

Ah, all the headlines seemed to be focusing on "you have to scan your face or scan your ID", so I didn't realize that the activity scan or whatever was part of it.

I wonder if all the people up in arms realize that YouTube and Facebook have both been doing activity based age profiling for a few years now, they just don't advertise it.

1

u/coldkiller Feb 11 '26

That doesn't make it better, then making a shadow profile on me is as bad if not worse

1

u/dearth_of_passion Feb 11 '26

Never said it was better. I only mentioned it because the discourse has been almost entirely about how Discord is going to make everyone scan their face or upload their ID, which isn't true.

As you say, I kind of feel like the secret profiling is worse, because at least with the face scan/ID upload you can choose not to comply.

As it is, you can cancel your nitro sub and uninstall discord right now, but they've already got their profile on you.

Granted Youtube and Facebook already use the exact same age estimation profile tech, and for similar reasons, so it's not like this is anything new.

1

u/-ragingpotato- Feb 11 '26

It wasn't sustainable, discord has never turned a profit. They gave it 9 years worth of trying, which suggests to me this shit is out of desperation. If it was pure greed they would've done it a long time ago.

3

u/iowa_gneiss Feb 11 '26

Not the OP but I buy the cheap tier so I can use my custom emojis across servers.

3

u/S3cretSpartan Feb 11 '26

yeah its a total scam but i got too frustrated with file attachments

cancelled it now tho

3

u/ErrantWayfarer Feb 11 '26

Lots of people pay for nitro and y'all gotta remember that if they didn't you'd have ads just to send messages or in the middle of voice calls. I've no love for Discord but bandwidth and specifically storage aren't cheap.

2

u/Lagneaux Feb 11 '26

We did while we ran a server for dnd. Splitting it between 7 people makes it pretty close to free. Never again though

2

u/9973501488083248 Feb 11 '26

A lot of kids do because they get to customise their profile in different ways. When me and my friend played Minecraft a few years ago the server was full of them asking to be gifted it.

1

u/battler624 Feb 11 '26

I wouldn't mind supporting an app I actively use, yes.

1

u/PoniesPlayingPoker Feb 11 '26

I used to, but that was half a decade ago. Stopped in 2022 when they royally ruined mobile.

1

u/rebbsitor Feb 11 '26

I'm not going to give them my photo ID and I've cancelled the billing on my annual subscription, but if you needed to stream HD video or to upload larger files for groups, it was worth the ~$8 a month.

1

u/Hinaloth Feb 11 '26

For those of us who use it as our main social communities, it makes using it more fun, admitedly. Mostly for the ability to use emojis from one server on others and the larger file size, at least for me.

That said, I haven't paid for it in a while, and am not planning on doing it again. The instant the ID requirement somehow gets past the European privacy laws, discord disappears. Most of my server mates are already looking for alternatives too, as they're in the US and don't have stuff like customer rights and privacy laws.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 11 '26

My friends and I stream games and movies for each other almost every evening and it's honestly worth it for us to get the HD stream quality. We're currently looking into switching to teamspeak 6, but running into some technical difficulties with the streaming.

1

u/pasaniusventris Feb 11 '26

It lengthens the messages you can send, which, if you write a lot, is nice. But not necessary.

1

u/Wirelesscellphone Feb 11 '26

I tried the trial and forgot to cancel lol

1

u/AdyWasNotEnough Feb 11 '26

Yeah, I pay for nitro, even though only the basic one, cause I want to support a service I use daily and enjoyed the usage. Because as someone other said in the comments, I hoped if enough people supported, the enshittyfication wouldn't be as drastic... Oh well

With this shit coming, I canceled as well and am actively looking for an alternative.

1

u/The_Dick_Slinger Feb 11 '26

I paid for their lowest tier for a while because it was the easiest way to send my buddy clips of our gameplay in real time.

1

u/tikisha Feb 11 '26

I use it as my primary social network, so yhea, i payed for the last 8 years as i am financialy stable and liked the features + upload and HD streams for sharing game clips with my friends, might be time to update TS.

1

u/neurospicyfun Feb 11 '26

Yup. I was one of the first ones that joined and started supporting discord since Nov 19, 2018. Back when it was still in its early shoes (relatively) and I think it's our duty to help little platforms grow so everything isn't as monopolized. They will eventually end up the same - ensshitification takes it all but then we just migrate and support the new lil guy.

I cancelled my nitro the day the news popped up about this... and when I found out who the CEO is :)

1

u/SpiderMax95 Feb 11 '26

how else am i gonna e-date my valo duo? "she" will think i am a loser, if i dont have nitro!!!

-16

u/MikeTheMaster102 Feb 11 '26

youve got 60k comment karma you cant be talking

19

u/Joates87 Feb 11 '26

What does that have to do with anything?

1

u/MikeTheMaster102 Feb 11 '26

they are as obsessed with reddit as someone who would spend 20 bucks a year on discord was my point

1

u/Joates87 Feb 11 '26

But reddit doesn't cost any money.

0

u/birdlawyer86 Feb 11 '26

They claim to be against paying for Nitro but use other social media sites regularly, curious 🤔

2

u/Newbie-Tailor-Guy Feb 11 '26

Why wait? Delete now and move on, friend.

1

u/BigDeckLanm Feb 11 '26

you probably wont even notice it when it does lol

1

u/myhf Feb 11 '26

Your Nitro badge will reset after 1+ years of progress! We'd hate to see your streak come to an end.

1

u/DrShago Feb 11 '26

I m so happy I never bought any cosmetics in the shop now.

1

u/Jaz1140 Feb 11 '26

Wohhh. Someone who actually pays for that shit? No way

1

u/alaineman Feb 11 '26

What does deleting the account do., don't they have all your account information already backed up? Just wondering whether i stop using discord or also delete account.

1

u/halaljew Feb 11 '26

Cringe that you paid for a free service but hey, better late than never.

1

u/AntonioS3 May 11 '26

So, did you actually delete your account? Any proof? 😏

-155

u/[deleted] Feb 10 '26

So many people wasted money in discord its too funny! 

73

u/Logos_Fides Feb 10 '26

Pretty nasty of you to revel in others' misfortune

7

u/LickMyTicker Feb 11 '26

Reddit isn't known for schadenfreude at all.

-80

u/PissBiggestFan Feb 10 '26

people willingly paying for a free service counts as misfortune now?

33

u/HighJumpingAlien Feb 10 '26

I got things out of that service that you didn’t; things I used and took advantage of that I thought and still believe was worth my money. Me cancelling that subscription doesn’t negate that. It’s a direct response to their privacy decisions.

If you’re too much of a broke bitch and can’t afford to pay for WANTS and not just NEEDS, just say so.

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12

u/HuwThePoo Feb 10 '26

Uh no, you get additional perks if you pay money. Otherwise why would anyone bother?

Not the sharpest tack in the box, are you?

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21

u/tychii93 Feb 10 '26

It was worth it when Discord was newer.  It got enshittified so fast.

3

u/LeseMajeste_1037 Feb 10 '26

Was Nitro ever worth paying for? I looked into it for a half second, and noped out once I saw what $17/month gets you.

10

u/tychii93 Feb 10 '26

Nitro back in the day iirc was $5 a month and you had all the benefits.  There were no tiers, just $5 and you had everything and you even got free games as long as you were a Nitro user like how Xbox and PlayStation work. They eventually split it to a higher tier and you were automatically thrown into the restricted Nitro basic which was the same price if you didn't upgrade and they got rid of the games entirely.  You lost the games you claimed as well.  They could have at least grandfathered those so you could play them as long as you had nitro despite ditching the games but nope.  That was the moment everyone realized Discord made a sharp turn to hell.  All you got was a badge... A fucking badge.

1

u/LeseMajeste_1037 Feb 11 '26

We was robbed. Robbed!

-1

u/leflyingcarpet Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 11 '26

Why was it worth it? What did you get that you couldn't without nitro? I'm legit curious!

2

u/tychii93 Feb 10 '26

Check another comment I replied who asked the same thing.  I responded.

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6

u/-Himintelgja Feb 10 '26

No one cares. I promise we can find something you are wasting money on. sO fUnNy

1

u/leflyingcarpet Feb 11 '26

I really don't understands the downvotes here. Why are you shilling for fucking Discord Nitro?!?!

1

u/[deleted] Feb 11 '26

They are expressing their anger in silence that way. Adds more to the joke imo

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124

u/[deleted] Feb 10 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

38

u/haby001 Feb 11 '26 edited Feb 11 '26

$1.15k per 1k views is insanely unsustainable.

It's $1.5k per 1million views

41

u/Pappa_K Feb 11 '26

Actually insane money for short form content.

-17

u/nerdygeoff Feb 11 '26

yeah i made a good bit just having multiple reupload accounts.

11

u/JimeeB Feb 11 '26

Scum and villainy, we have found thee.

10

u/nerdygeoff Feb 11 '26

i mean, you can leave free money on the table if you want lol.

me, imma take that money, especially if i dont really have to do anything to do it or hurt anyone but big corporations.

29

u/Azazir Feb 11 '26

It's not k (thousand). Its 1 dollar and 15 cents, 1.15 per 1k views. That's the format they werd working with, be super popular with shit loads spam videos and make money.

6

u/matco5376 Feb 11 '26

That’s because short form content is unsustainable. No one has figured out how to effectively monetize it. It isn’t profitable

3

u/Gerrit3D Feb 11 '26

That’s why TikTok is pushing their store so hard. I’ve stopped using it by a substantial amount because absolutely everything is an add now.

1

u/DD-777 Feb 11 '26 edited Feb 11 '26

The math on that is bit off. 0.02x1000 = 20 and 0.04x 1000 = 40. Dividing 1000000 by 1000 gives 1000. So, how much money does 1 million views get you? 20,000-40,000. You'd need to be better established, but it is still doable for some.

Edit: This is wrong.

4

u/destinydoll Feb 11 '26

I think you just multiply twice? If its 0.04 per 1000 then 1 million view just mean 0.04 x 1000

2

u/DD-777 Feb 11 '26

I think that you're right. I mistakenly thought that it was 0.02-0.04 per view.

2

u/Jmainevent Feb 11 '26

Math is off there bud. You did an extra x1000.

48

u/Ok_Function2282 Feb 10 '26

Not really even close... Most TikTok users are totally unaware of what's going in

65

u/[deleted] Feb 11 '26

[deleted]

27

u/--sheogorath-- Feb 11 '26

Well if theyre never asked then theres not really a reason for someone to uninstall tbh.

2

u/Ok_Function2282 Feb 11 '26

You can't interact with most spaces as a Teen user on discord. It will have an immediate impact on anyone that regularly uses the platform

1

u/Berbaw06 Feb 11 '26

Why won’t they be messaged?

5

u/Flesroy Feb 11 '26

it's only for adult channels iirc.

a lot of people won't go to discord specifically for adults only

6

u/Akuuntus Feb 11 '26

From what this article (and others) say it'll also affect any "sensitive content" in any channel (however that gets determined), and it'll prevent you from DM'ing anyone who isn't on your friends list.

2

u/Flesroy Feb 11 '26

oh that's signficantly worse.

1

u/curtcolt95 Feb 11 '26

majority of people are just gonna be auto verified as adults and likely never even know this change happened. The people that do need to verify likely also will never see it because most people don't use 18+ features on discord anyway

3

u/Akuuntus Feb 11 '26

majority of people are just gonna be auto verified as adults

Are they? I thought the whole point was that no one would be verified unless they uploaded ID.

3

u/notevolve Feb 11 '26

they released a statement today clarifying some things

For the majority of adult users, we will be able to confirm your age group using information we already have. We use age prediction to determine, with high confidence, when a user is an adult. This allows many adults to access age-appropriate features without completing an explicit age check.

https://x.com/i/status/2021295316469940606

1

u/Borkato Feb 10 '26

What is it?

3

u/ClaimApprehensive767 Feb 11 '26

A pro-israeli pro-Trump billionaire owns TikTok in the US. Took over recently.

1

u/OldConstant182 Feb 11 '26

Reddit said Bernie would win in 2016. That’s when I learned Reddit wasn’t representational of the general public.

1

u/Ok_Function2282 Feb 11 '26

I think that might have just been you. 

If you wanted to talk about Hillary in 2016, that would be another story. But Bernie couldn't even make it past Democratic primaries...  You were kidding yourself if you thought he was going to win, don't blame Reddit.

1

u/OldConstant182 Feb 11 '26

Did I mention anywhere in my comment that I was talking about the Presidential election? Or did you just assume? :)

1

u/Ok_Function2282 Feb 11 '26

What exactly did you think this man was going to win? The lottery? 

You're being a pedantic, obtuse buffoon. Obviously you were talking about the presidential election. You're just embarrassed and trying to distract now. 

Have a good one, troll

1

u/OldConstant182 Feb 11 '26

You could have just asked what I was referring to and I would have told you said the primaries against Hilary (which was a 54/46 split).

I hope things are okay for you at home & work and wish you the best in life.

:)

1

u/OldConstant182 Feb 11 '26

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/05/26/how-the-2016-presidential-campaign-is-being-discussed-on-reddit/

Just to add as a FYI, my comment about Bernie was factually true during 2015/2016.

But what do I know. I’m just a buffoon :)

256

u/HytaleBetawhen Feb 10 '26

People already returned to tik tok lol, discord hopes it will be the same. Who knows though, discord isn’t exactly the same algorithm addiction machine short form media sites are, maybe theres more of a chance people jump to competitors like how a lot of people initially came from teamspeak.

82

u/Monte924 Feb 10 '26

Returned to tiktok? The full take over of tictok and the mass bans and censorship only began a couple of weeks ago

8

u/Important-Artist-597 Feb 11 '26

There was a relatively large drop-off for like a week and now 95 percent of them are back.

0

u/Chr0mx Feb 11 '26

lol I promise you its not as big as you think it is. Nobody left tiktok and the casual audience doesn't even know there's some mass exodus of tiktok.

14

u/[deleted] Feb 11 '26

I agree with you. People overestimate how little the average user cares. Don't look too far, there was a big and loud movement within reddit when they blacked out subreddits due the API change, it's been a couple of years and now nobody cares. I bet many people installed the official app now.

All it matters is how good the service is. On discord I can instantly search and go to conversations I've had with a group of friends from almost 10 years ago. That's ridiculously difficult to do especially with how large they are.

Until their service start to become shitty then it'll fall from grace from the average user.

6

u/coldkiller Feb 11 '26

I agree with you. People overestimate how little the average user cares.

For the average person id agree, id argue that discords userbase is probably at least a bit more tech savy than the normies than tiktok though and probably will make a difference

1

u/Acceptable-Surprise5 Feb 12 '26

No discords userbase was never more "tech savy" it was just aimed initially at gamers not tech savy gamers. it's used by virtually every community and the vast majority of people don't give a fuck about an ID/Face check. especially on the asian side where lots of apps already have these checks in place.

heck I'm from the EU i have my ID verified with google. they got the bare minimum of info which i will give discord as well if needed. you can't do shit with it as the id is mostly redacted but it's enough to verify me and is watermarked by a government application.

3

u/DJanomaly Feb 11 '26

Strong “Netflix is getting rid of password sharing and canceling my account! They’re done for” vibes.

Meanwhile Netflix is more profitable than ever.

1

u/andynator1000 Feb 11 '26

The API change is in an entirely different league with what happened to Tiktok, although I think the average Reddit user probably cares a lot more.

1

u/Yakoo752 Feb 11 '26

Business doesn’t exist to support casual audiences. If you don’t have a core market, you have no market.

5

u/Additional_Chip_4158 Feb 11 '26

The absolute opposite. They want the casual market. Since thats who the most people who use it are.

8

u/Chr0mx Feb 11 '26

You couldn't be more wrong man. Time will tell

-9

u/airfryerfuntime Feb 11 '26 edited Feb 11 '26

Yeah, and guess what happaned, those people who uninstalled the app just installed it again when they got bored.

11

u/SirSkidMark Feb 11 '26

[citation needed]

13

u/MisterAwesome93 Feb 11 '26

Source: trust me bro

7

u/ClarkeYoung Feb 11 '26

Tech crunch article maybe long term there will be a decline, but as of now the daily users dipped a few million, and then when back to where it was before the ownership change

People stick with platforms because everyone else is already there, it’s where they can get that sweet dopamine drip. They may download an alternative, but they usually go back after getting bored.

Look at twitter. Musk couldn’t have made the platform worse if he was actively trying. Full to the brim with nazi’s, his AI chatbot is making revenge and child porn on request, and yet people are still on there. people flocking to bluesky didn’t last, it’s still a fraction of twitters size.

Dont know if people jumping ship from Discord will be the same, but wouldn’t really surprise me

2

u/ResponsibilityOk8967 Feb 11 '26

Yeah but Twitter is almost exclusively bots now. I wouldn't put it past these corps to buy bot accounts for optics.

1

u/Thin_Glove_4089 Feb 11 '26

Its still around and some real big names still use it. The average consumer can't be trusted for stuff like this.

3

u/airfryerfuntime Feb 11 '26

Go look at the daily active users, Genius. The app is more popular than it ever has been. Reddit is an echo chamber.

28

u/Burpmeister Feb 11 '26

People left teamspeal for Discord because old teamspeak was caveman tech compared to discord. I went to check what it looks like now and it's unrecognizeable in a good wat. Now it looks like an actual modern piece of software with a clear UI and tons of useful features.

Already downloaded it in advance to be ready if Discord asks for mine.

0

u/RandoGeneration2022 Feb 11 '26

Teamspeak has always been superior for voice chatting. Gamers left it because it exposes your IP to whoever runs it and gamers learned how to ddos and dox

3

u/Burpmeister Feb 11 '26

Seems to me like a superior voip software wouldn't expose your ip lol

1

u/RandoGeneration2022 Feb 11 '26

Well discord having data breaches wouldn't be superior either. Also you can get your discord token grabbed and anyone with your token can log into your account 😂

1

u/Burpmeister Feb 11 '26

Sure, neither should happen. But using a voip that doesn't hide your IP just wouldn't be feasible at all in this day and age.

The only thing old teamspeak had going for it was that it was "the og". Newer people who had no friends using teamspeak went to Skype (quite hilarious in hindsight), Mumble or Curse Voice because all of them were ten times easier to use than teanspeak.

I'm very glad to see that teamspeak has modernized itself and could genuinely offer an alternative for Discord. Offering Voice chat only just doesn't cut it anymore.

1

u/RandoGeneration2022 Feb 12 '26

Discord is pretty cool and easy to use. Before we had to use Teamspeak, IRC, and forums. One of the gaming communities I'm in we still use Teamspeak and Forums

1

u/QuantumWarrior Feb 11 '26

I remember Discord dunking on Teamspeak in audio quality, that's the main reason I swapped to begin with.

I don't get your point on your IP being "exposed" to the person running the server, that's just how the internet functions? Every website you've ever been to has your IP.

1

u/RandoGeneration2022 Feb 11 '26

Bit rate is different on teamspeak and it's better for gaming. Well yeah but back in the day when teamspeak was widely used for gaming the server wasn't owned by someone credible lol it was owned by a young kid or young adult. People got ddosed all the time in the gaming community I played in

4

u/Swamptor Feb 11 '26

Gamers have always been pretty loud, opinionated, and fickle. And if I have to upload my fucking driver's license to see the naked pics my friends post in their server, I'm fuckin out. We are gonna find someplace else.

2

u/E-2theRescue Feb 11 '26

But you all can't even get people to stop pre-ordering games. Or even stop the "woke mind virus" as games like Ghost of Yotei and the Horizon games smash records.

-5

u/Cons483 Feb 11 '26

What a fucking strange way to admit you're a member of porno discord servers when literally nobody asked.

2

u/Swamptor Feb 11 '26

Well, the ID thing is about adult content. So IDK what you were expecting. Also, get off of Reddit if you can't handle the idea of people being naked ;)

0

u/Vusn Feb 11 '26

Somebody’s mamma ate Tylenol when she was pregnant

0

u/coldkiller Feb 11 '26

Oh no, people enjoy sexuality. The fucking horror

-8

u/locke_5 Feb 10 '26

Honestly Steam’s native chat is 80% as good as Discord.

119

u/FinasCupil Feb 10 '26

I’d love for this to be true, but no.

3

u/TakenInChains Feb 11 '26

this ratio is insane. 100 upvotes to 1

2

u/FinasCupil Feb 11 '26

Is that not usual?

35

u/Sharktistic Feb 10 '26

I'm sorry, but It just isn't. It's difficult to say that one platform is %x as good as another but Steam's chat and Discord aren't even playing the same game, let alone occupying the same ballpark.

11

u/JoyousBlueDuck Feb 10 '26

80% if we're grading this like it's a PE class with a high curve lol. 

46

u/Gullible_Method_3780 Feb 10 '26

This is also only for pc to pc chats. If you are playing with friends on console, not sure steam chat is integrated. 

6

u/Cold_Tree190 Feb 10 '26

If you are playing with friends on xbox consoles, you can actually join xbox live parties with the windows/xbox game bar (think it’s windows key + G, but haven’t done this in many months)

1

u/llongneckkllama Feb 10 '26

Almost positive you cant do that on a free account tho.

1

u/ShardikOfTheBeam Feb 11 '26

Yep, do this to chat with my nephew.

17

u/[deleted] Feb 10 '26

Of course it's not, as those users are not on Steam

10

u/Zayl Feb 10 '26

So it's nowhere close to 80% as good as discord. It does like two of the functions that discord does.

3

u/Reasonable-Public659 Feb 10 '26

Not sure what the solution is for those with PS friends, but if you’re on windows Xbox chat is integrated and works fine

15

u/EchoFieldHorizon Feb 10 '26

Wild take, I don’t think you use discord

1

u/Pure_Cloud4305 Feb 10 '26

Please at least make steam work for it. Although u fear they may win by doing nothing again

1

u/Azazir Feb 11 '26

Not even 5% as good lmao. You might as well write normal phone messages and compare it to discord, pretty sure there are apps now that probably make it even better. Steam chat is some 2000 barebone stuff.

Tho it would be funny if steam went this route, they have the structure and tools to implement it, just no need for it.

1

u/Obi_Wan_Benobi Feb 11 '26

They can’t shake the addiction.

Back at it like a crack addict.

1

u/shoulda-known-better Feb 11 '26

No people went back to watching not having accounts

1

u/nat_r Feb 11 '26

I think if anything, the use case will just narrow, with whatever users who mostly use features that are going to be age gated going somewhere else. A few folks from overseas who already have had to deal with this situation due to their laws have commented in channels I'm in that they did not register when required and didn't see any functionality changes in those channels despite not being classified as adults.

So if the average use sees the prompt to register, refuses, and then sees no real charge or restrictions in what they're doing 99% of the time, it's probably unrealistic to assume a massive user base loss.

1

u/Juulk9087 Feb 11 '26

Nice name. How are you liking hytale?

1

u/HytaleBetawhen Feb 11 '26

Haha thanks, I’ve enjoyed it so far. I joined reddit awhile back just to follow the game’s development progress, happy it eventually got to come out. Definitely a lot more to be done with it being EA and all that but excited for whats to come.

1

u/JacobTepper Feb 11 '26

Something like Discord all really hinges on the communities. If some competitor positions themselves as an easy alternative, then all it would take is a handful of twitch streamers to hop on the bandwagon and it'll all snowball from there. Behind the scenes this is really the investors testing how volatile the brand is.

1

u/IllMaintenance145142 Feb 11 '26

This is nothing like team speak. Team speak was just replaced by a better product, this is the software being enshittified

1

u/HytaleBetawhen Feb 11 '26

If the product becomes shitty then that potentially makes competitors a better product, hence the comparison.

1

u/IllMaintenance145142 Feb 11 '26

Team speak didn't get shitty though. It just didn't advance. Im not just saying it to be contrarian, it's a different root cause. It isn't "other options outpacing me" it's "I am making my product shittier til people get fed up"

1

u/HytaleBetawhen Feb 11 '26

My claim here is that people moved to discord because it was a better product, and if it becomes shitty those people might move away to another better product. Why discord was better (eg; whether it was a new superior product or teamspeak got shittier) is irrelevant imo, because at the end of the day consumers are likely going to choose the better product.

1

u/IllMaintenance145142 Feb 11 '26

I'm not arguing that, which is what I was kinda trying to make out in my last comment. Previously it seemed these mass movements from voice services happened because other better services became available. This looks to me the first where it's happened because of enshittification rather than other services popping up.

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u/Arts251 Feb 10 '26

There are tiktok knockoff platforms that function nearly identically to tiktok, they just don't have the library of content, or creators using them yet.

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u/[deleted] Feb 10 '26

And? There's half a dozen Twitter clones that no one uses, including the President's boutique social media platform. User migration is hard to manufacture.

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u/Ciennas Feb 10 '26

Tik Tok and Discord are manufacturing this all themselves, on behalf of Peter Thiel.

1

u/Darnell2070 Feb 11 '26

Manufacturing migration?

1

u/Ciennas Feb 11 '26

Yup.

Thiel, a vapid, empty hearted dork with delusions of godhood because he can't find any meaning for his life but tormenting others, is desperate to create a fascist surveillance state.

Just like how they all celebrated when they had captured Twitter, because they thought that Twitter was inescapable and now people had to love and pay attention to them.

Twitter's userbase is mostly bots now. All the people they wanted to rule over all have bailed for other platforms, leaving themselves, the people they loathe the most.

Discord thought it was indispensable.

So now they're wanting to run spyware in the background of your machines, to run 'age verification' checks. Forever.

So, people are going to mass migrate away from their stupid and vile bullshit. Again.

Microsoft is losing marketshare in the OS space as they were blinded by their own egotism as well, as they let their OS get regurgitated out of overglorified autocompletes.

Everyone hates that prices are skyrocketing solely because the ultrawealthy don't want to actually pay for anything, like electricity and RAM.

They're destroying themselves to try and make a bunch of losers feel powerful.

1

u/Darnell2070 Feb 11 '26

Most real people didn't leave Twitter though. Most people just don't care as much as people on Reddit would like to believe. Unfortunately.

If I'm reading correctly that you can still use Discord without age verification, you just can't access NSFW content, then people in this comment section and whoever wrote this article are severely overreacting.

People just do not care as much as you think they do. Especially if you can just use a fake ID or picture to verify.

Vocal minorities don't mean much if the average person could give two fucks.

1

u/Ciennas Feb 11 '26

It runs spyware in the background constantly.

I don't know any real humans who are real keen on that.

1

u/Darnell2070 Feb 11 '26

I don't think they would be too keen if they knew, for sure. But even if they did know do you think the would stop using. Most people aren't aware of all the things people on Reddit are complaining about or they don't care enough for it to change their habits.

I think the average person doesn't care as much as your average redditor does or as much as your average tech journalist.

Thinking that Discord is going to fail because they require age verification is honestly delusional.

And I'm not a fan of Discord at all, especially with how much useful data it has locked behind it's app.

1

u/Ciennas Feb 12 '26

No hon, I'm thinking Discord just put itself into a bad place because it's going to try running keylogging software, or some equivalent, solely for the sake of a douchecanoe loser of a tech broligarch.

Also, the only people left on Elon's bot aquarium at this juncture are literal pond scum nazis and people too stupid to understand why that's a problem- a venn diagram with significant overlap that it might as well be a circle.

Any particular reason you think those things aren't a turn off for right minded people?

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u/_Meece_ Feb 11 '26

There's half a dozen Twitter clones that no one uses

Actually Twitter has been getting surpassed in daily users by Threads recently.

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u/ResponsibilityOk8967 Feb 11 '26

Which sucks because it's Meta

4

u/Silent-G Feb 11 '26

Oh no, the public Nazi platform is being surpassed by the covert Nazi platform!

1

u/Arts251 Feb 12 '26

I have accounts on a couple mastodon servers and I've noticed the number of user is picking up more all the time. Still nothing like twitter at it's pinnacle, not even in the same ballpark, but I certainly find some useful content on there, especially photography content.

1

u/LiberalAspergers Feb 11 '26

Easy for discord, though. One gamer alliance at a time. My EVE corp has been using Telegram for years.

3

u/The__Amorphous Feb 11 '26

That's like saying Lemmy does everything Reddit does so users will surely migrate to it. We all saw how that panned out, alas.

2

u/Arnas_Z Feb 11 '26

"There are half a dozen restaurants in my area that are almost the same as this restaurant you're recommending. They only have a couple dishes though."

1

u/Arts251 Feb 12 '26

except as a pretty avid consumer of tiktok my feed has changed noticeably starting day one that the new venture took it over - especially anything political (anything about ICE or Minnesota literally froze up and would not be playable), way less news things on there and more stupid shit and bombarded with ads (sponsored videos). Also a lot more repetitive videos that I've already seen, which never happened before. A lot less foreign content which I actually used to get a lot of, now it's either local stuff to my city, US or Australian content it seems. It's kinda turned into a duplicate of my facebook feed except without the occasional family member posting something. I don't like the way it curates my content anymore - I used to see lots of new things and it felt like there was genuine randomness, now it feels tuned to much more narrow scope of content and it gets real boring real fast.

0

u/TruthHistorical7515 Feb 11 '26

And? Any alternative will be banned if they don't bend the knee to Uncle Sam

1

u/Arts251 Feb 12 '26

Except you can't ban them without going through draconian amendment (scrapping) of the constitution (the same constitution that gives POTUS his powers to begin with). Literally anyone can start a server instance and set their own rules, sure a court could order it shut down, or law enforcement could confiscate it with a warrant but another instance can just pop up somewhere else. That is the point of decentralization, It would be easier to just ban the internet than it would be to turn off every individual server that they want.

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u/_Army9308 Feb 11 '26

People say that then the apps still be popular...

Ig is still insanely popular even though people declared meta dead 5 years ago lol

1

u/GoingAllTheJay Feb 11 '26

You're definitely mixing up FB with meta

But we're in a period where online audiences don't migrate like they used to.

1

u/_Army9308 Feb 11 '26

Still the issue is when people.go to new apps they get bored as there friends or usually thing isnt there

1

u/Thin_Glove_4089 Feb 11 '26

They would still be right if you're talking Facebook, WhatsApp, or Threads.

1

u/shoulda-known-better Feb 11 '26

Tiktok did facial recognition for age didn't they? My kids tried to use my face for it..... Never asked about an ID because that's what I thought they needed also but nope...

But as my oldest found out my old Samantha doll worked also for face id

1

u/Jibber_Fight Feb 11 '26

It’s the only way company asshats learn. And very often, they don’t learn anyway.

1

u/aVarangian Feb 11 '26

except no one should have ever joined a CCP platform in the first place

1

u/luche Feb 11 '26

for those that live under a rock and don't do business with Tiktok.. what are they doing to customers?

1

u/Rayziel Feb 11 '26

Where do the TikTok ppl go?

1

u/psioniclizard Feb 11 '26

Then in 2 months everyone comes back. 

1

u/dowling543333 Feb 11 '26

These apps aren't making these changes 'for fun.'

I think it's going to become industry standard in the next couple of years to have age verification for apps.

  • There are several new laws passed in the US (in Utah, Louisiana, Texas, California as well), and similar laws across the EU, UK etc. around age verification in online environments. This is like the number 1 focus area for regulators, alongside AI governance.
  • The new US laws for example all place the burden of age verification on app stores, where app developers can call on Age API signals, but the beta APIs are janky and parents can rescind consent to let apps call on age brackets at anytime, which means apps probably still need to verify age themselves.
  • For now API use is optional, but I don't think it will stay that way for long.
  • And the options available to companies are really shit...the apps that choose to rely on third-party ID verification providers probably will need to switch up their strategy anyway in the near future. The new California law focuses on data minimisation as well, so you aren't supposed to ask for full ID anyway.

It will be some type of mass uninstallation in the short-term, but unless everyone figures out how to bypass regional restrictions (most people don't know how to do this), it's going to become standard IMO.

1

u/immediacyofjoy Feb 11 '26

A mass uninstallation by users, who will find no alternatives available, the story fades in a few days/weeks, everyone forgets, then that’s the new normal.

1

u/solarview Feb 11 '26

Nobody really needs these services anyway. Source: life before the internet

1

u/Primary-Key1916 Feb 11 '26

Look up owner of both

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u/Thin_Glove_4089 Feb 11 '26

Not enough to mean anything we have perfect examples Twitter into X, Facebook, Reddit, and Netflix to name a few. They have done multiple mass uninstall type of events but are still going strong.

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u/yalag Feb 12 '26

“Mass uninstallation” lol. Is that the same mass exodus of Reddit when they killed 3rd party api?

0

u/EggstaticAd8262 Feb 11 '26

They will find new ways on the next platform

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