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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • Discord is going to be the age-verification-service for gaming, if they can get laws to follow fast enough.
    They have the gaming community, they have chats/friends/DMs/VoIP.
    If they release a dev toolkit that implements in-game chat, in-game VoIP, friends list and age verification… All while not being tied to steam? Imagine if they offered a system for in-game purchases and gifting purchases to friends (oh yeh https://gam3s.gg/news/discord-adds-in-app-purchases-for-in-game-items/ )
    They are positioning themselves to offer a huge range of features, easy navigation of legal minefields, and no distribution-platform tie-in - while also offering out-of-game functionality of all of that (likely leading to player retention for games that leverage it properly).

    They are positioning themselves to be a market-leader/industry-standard for game social networks. Everyone that has ever used discord is the product they are selling, and they are now releasing the features and tools for companies to leverage that.


  • I think this is the a major step in discords plan to be a service to games (ie business-to-business).
    They are positioning themselves to be an age-verifying platform for games, alongside in-game chat, in-game VoIP, in-game store and game community.

    At some point, games are going to have to require age verification. It’s just the way the “protect the children” bullshit is going (instead of “enable the parents to raise their kids”, which is far to socialist and progressive) Or game shops will. But if you don’t sell your game, that bypasses game shops. And if cracks can bypass purchasing, then… It’s on the game to comply with laws.
    If there is in-game chat: needs age verification.
    If there is in-game voip: needs age verification.

    At some point, discord is going to roll out this massive suite of dev tooling that “just works” for devs creating multiplayer games with voip, chat, in-game purchases, gifting in-game purchases to friends, friends lists, out-of-game chat, game communities etc. while also offering age verification.
    It already does a lot of that.
    They are getting ahead of the age verification laws so they offer a very simple path for developers to “just pay discord” to skip a HUGE legal minefield, and get a bunch of functionality for whatever cut discord decides .